3 April 2022  Issue No: 686

Joybrato Mukherjee, president of the German Academic Exchange Service, has visited Poland to discuss how Germany’s eastern neighbour is supporting refugees from Ukraine. At least 100,000 Ukrainian students and academics are expected to come to German universities in the near future.

Higher education institutions in Finland are preparing to offer study spaces to 2,000 Ukrainians who have fled the Russian invasion and were already in higher education, as a follow-up to a request from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. Tuition fees will be waived.

Amid ongoing industrial disputes that have damaged morale among higher education staff in the United Kingdom, 60% of respondents in a survey of 7,000 university staff at more than 100 UK higher education institutions said they were likely to leave the sector in the next five years.

Universities in the Global South need to be more creative in making up shortfalls in the financing of higher education as funding per student decreases as enrolments are increasing, a webinar held to launch a new report, World Higher Education: Institutions, students and funding, was told by the vice-chancellor of a leading African university.

A compliance culture focused on criteria delineated by an external authority can result in a process of ‘ticking boxes’ rather than one of examining the achievement of strategic goals defined by the higher education institution, addressing areas for improvement and fostering continuous quality enhancement.

The basic features of a new multilateral world order form the foundation for the joint agreement signed by the African and European unions, creating a window of opportunity for universities on both continents to strengthen their collaboration. It is up to universities to show that they are able to use this opportunity.

“There is an abundance of human talent in Africa, but it has not been coming through into advanced technical fields,” says Professor Neil Turok, who founded the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. In this way, African universities are failing to nurture academic talent.

A recently published book reveals that while historical collaboration and competition between German and American professors helped to give rise to the modern research university, such interchange also had a much darker side, particularly when it came to thinking about race.

The phenomenal growth of higher education in the Global South between 2006 and 2013 is over, according to a new report, and experts say the focus is increasingly turning to issues such as improving quality, the role of private providers, and funding.