4 April 2021  Issue No: 637

The global North-South divide on mass access to the COVID-19 vaccine demonstrates why greater collaboration is needed among governments in low- and middle-income countries to increase their scientific and technological capacity and produce more equitable access to intellectual property rights and cutting-edge research globally.

Canadian universities fear that the 65,000 drop in international student numbers this academic year caused by the COVID crisis will further increase following recently introduced pandemic-related travel restrictions, with a disproportionate impact on colleges and universities in smaller cities and remote areas due to quarantine arrangements.

Recent research shows that inadequate governance and the dominance of the vice-chancellor are leaving the United Kingdom’s universities dangerously exposed to market threats, but this isn’t the only nation’s education system facing severe leadership gaps. Australia and New Zealand display a similar approach.

University presidents from 30 countries have signed a ‘Joint Statement of Global University Leaders on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, witnessed by United Nations officials, committing themselves to collaborate to address global challenges caused by climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, inequality and unemployment.

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E-platforms such as Studyportals and ApplyBoard answer the question that if you want to buy a book online you go to Amazon, but if you want to get an international education or study abroad, where do you go? Will COVID prove a watershed?

The sudden growth of agent aggregators, amid a clamour for edtech solutions and a need to accelerate out of the pandemic, may seem a good idea, but could it end up with certain companies dominating and skewing the international student market towards certain countries?

With human rights experts at the United Nations on high alert at the worsening, life-threatening situation of the Swedish-Iranian scientist Dr Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been arbitrarily arrested and detained in Iran, leaders of Swedish and German university associations have demanded his release.

The monumental contribution that Professor Christof Heyns has made to advance human rights in Africa and beyond emerged this week from a memorial Facebook page created to honour the former director of the Centre for Human Rights, which is part of the faculty of law, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Former students, academic peers from across the world and colleagues remembered him as an academic, activist, intellectual and human being.