6 December 2020  Issue No: 623

The United Nations secretary general has called on the world to take urgent climate action and has praised the work of universities as “essential to our success”. He has called on all organisations to examine their contribution to achieving carbon neutrality.

Private universities and some foreign branch campuses in Malaysia, many of them barely viable before the COVID-19 pandemic, fear for their survival as foreign students have been restricted, decimating income from tuition fees, including at foreign branch campuses that make the country an international higher education hub.

In a seaside tourist town plagued by growing poverty and unrest, community organisers and retired academics have addressed the challenge by creating from scratch a university run by local people for local people with support from partnerships with Stellenbosch and Cape Town universities.

On 27 January 2021 University World News, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, will be bringing together experts and practitioners from the International Association of Universities, the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities and the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program in an online webinar on how universities can improve their social impact.

Against a backdrop of growing hostility between China and the United States, Japan is beefing up measures to protect university scientific research from foreign espionage. Experts say this also reflects Tokyo’s geopolitical interests in line with the US-Japan security partnership signed in 1960.

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External quality assurance is invaluable – especially for determining if national standards are being met – but it is not enough. If universities truly want to improve, they need to embed regular internal quality assurance processes within their institution and learn from the experience.

Radical affirmative action programmes may be required to grow the share of female students enrolled in science, technology and innovation and to increase the number of female lecturers and researchers, who remain woefully under-represented in these fields in African higher education institutions.