16 January 2022  Issue No: 675

The hopes of hundreds of thousands of international students for a return to China by February – having been shut out since March 2020 – are now receding, with major outbreaks of COVID-19 in Chinese cities, fuelled by the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Universities in China and overseas are unexpectedly benefiting from China’s crackdown on technology companies in recent months, with some top-level artificial intelligence and other high-end tech talent returning to academia as the sector shrinks under a crackdown on ‘market-distorting’ practices, and salaries are reined in.

New regulations regarding off-campus education and training institutions herald the continuation of China’s trend towards a mixed economy or a ‘free market’ under which capitalism is closely supervised by the government, ie by the ruling Communist Party.

There is a lot of excitement around the European Universities Initiative, but the challenges of achieving seamless transnational cooperation between higher education institutions in the European Union are manifold, particularly in the development of joint degrees or the efforts to establish financially sustainable entities.

In October 2021, medical anthropologist Professor Margaret Gyapong received the coveted Outstanding Female Scientist Prize. The prize is awarded to female scientists who have made a significant contribution and built measurable impactful research capacity through training and mentorship of a next generation of scientists in Africa.

At a time when not a week goes by without reports of another small liberal arts college in the United States facing financial ruin or a university cutting back its liberal arts offerings, Richard A Detweiler’s new book documents the contribution liberal arts can make, particularly to poorer students.