14 August 2022  Issue No: 703

Major regional higher education organisations in Southeast Asia have launched a roadmap to 2025 that will promote the mobility of students, faculty, researchers and interns, the development of common quality assurance benchmarks and mutual recognition of higher education credentials within the region.

Over several days in March, rocketeers based in Belgorod in Russia, 80 kilometres away, fired missiles at Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine. Missiles damaged a number of Karazin University buildings, destroyed its Institute of Public Administration and exploded in the Rare Book Library, which housed 60,000 of the university’s 3,350,000 books and manuscripts.

A new study shows that more than two-thirds of staff at America’s universities and colleges are considering leaving their jobs, indicating that while higher education has historically been viewed as a good employer, many of its practices have not kept pace with employees’ needs.

We hope that the implementation of a roadmap for a common higher education space in the ASEAN region can be inclusive and engaging and aligned with global consensus, and can help us to reconsider the fundamentals of higher education and ensure that it is ready for the challenges we face on all fronts.

If a university committee system is to work properly, it needs to be characterised by timely decision-making, no unnecessary duplication and-or overlaps in memberships and in the various committees’ remit, and an efficient flow of communication between committees and the broader university community.

Universities have a growing interest in understanding their impact on climate change, whether positive or negative. And while it is true that we may never be able to identify, document and compare all of the influences, there is still a vital place for monitoring and research.

The announcement by the London-based Horniman Museum of the return to Nigeria of 72 artefacts that have been in its collection for about 125 years has spawned divergent responses from experts in the West African country’s academic and cultural communities.

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.