4 December 2022  Issue No: 719

As predicted, higher education is trying as fast as possible to return to the old way of looking at internationalisation as a market and income source, ignoring the high social and economic risks of such an approach as well as neglecting ethical concerns.

It was becoming almost impossible for non-South Africans to join academia amid an ongoing “ring-fencing of the academic space”. To tackle xenophobic practices in universities, strong institutional leadership was needed, it emerged at a round table on academic xenophobia.

In a three-week series, University World News looks at the latest flashpoints in the battle to defend the tradition of collegial or bicameral college and university governance that has predominated in North America for more than a century but is now under threat.

No one could have predicted the changes to academe in respect of the internet, tenure and ideology. But they have fundamentally altered academic life, driving the need for a new framework for academe based on what unites academics across geographical and disciplinary borders.

The higher education sector, like many others, faces an existential challenge to respond to the climate emergency, but by sharing solutions in the spirit of open learning and collaboration – activities at which universities excel – we can lead the way in responding.

With questions about universities’ contribution to society growing increasingly louder, including from political quarters, the challenge of measuring the social and economic impact of higher education institutions is increasingly coming under the spotlight, as it did at the recent University Social Responsibility Summit.

A recent report in the United States which shows how few students re-enrol in a second higher education institution, let alone graduate, after their first shuts down has highlighted the need for stricter enforcement of regulations aimed at preventing closures and protecting state consumer protection laws.

The Sustainable Development Goals framework provides an opportunity for universities to “collaborate across differences” and represents a new “common language” for universities’ social responsibility agendas, according to key speakers participating in the University Social Responsibility Summit held from 16 to 18 November.