24 July 2022  Issue No: 702

The largely ignored but serious challenges facing the United States – increasing instability including geopolitical tensions, mass shootings, the politicisation of higher education, racism and the potential return of Trump – are accelerating the decline of the country as the undisputed global academic leader.

Data shows the presence of a university tends to make local housing costs more expensive and increases the level of homelessness, an issue which universities have a ‘civic duty’ to address for the sake of the local community and their most vulnerable students, says a new report.

The UK Visas and Immigration agency as well as the country’s universities embraced technology throughout the COVID pandemic so it stands to reason that technological innovation is the key to solving the current bottlenecks in the processing of visa applications for international students.

Neither of the two predominant models of financing public higher education – low tuition-low aid versus high tuition-high aid – manages to achieve both affordability and sustainability objectives. But there is another option that can be a worthy and achievable goal for many countries.

This has to be the decade of decisive climate action. That means trust, multilateralism and collaboration. With half of humanity in danger zones, we have a choice: ‘Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands,’ UN Secretary General António Guterres has warned.

The latest EU rules on research security include new restrictions on research with countries with a poor human rights record, placing a heavy compliance burden on universities which could result in their dropping some collaborative projects owing to complexities of due diligence.

The potential to disseminate disinformation on a large scale and undermine scientifically established facts represents an existential risk to humanity. Higher education institutions have a crucial role to play in developing a shared, empirically backed consensus based on facts, science and established knowledge.