19 March 2023  Issue No: 731

Over the past decade, academic freedom has declined in more than 22 countries, including India, China, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to the Academic Freedom Index: Update 2023, which claims to be the ‘first comprehensive overview of academic freedom worldwide’.

The opening of a branch campus by Australia’s Deakin University in India follows a long-standing relationship between the university and Indian academic partners and comes in the wake of a bilateral trade agreement and the finalisation of a joint education qualifications recognition mechanism.

This is part of a weekly University World News special report series on ‘AI and higher education’. The focus is on how universities are engaging with ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools. The articles from academics and our journalists around the world are exploring developments and university work in AI that have implications for higher education institutions and systems, students and staff, and teaching, learning and research.

Creating bridges between research and practice in the field of international student mobility is as urgent as it is complex and necessitates targeted action. Data, like that derived from a recent survey of researchers and practitioners, improves our understanding about what works best.

Short-term changes in research and publishing-related policies in universities and long-term changes to the education system more broadly are needed in Pakistan to produce research that not only has the promise of global impact but is connected to and usable by communities.

After national governments, higher education institutions are the second most commonly involved organisations in addressing the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs around the world and, while they obviously face resource constraints, universities are nonetheless in a prime position to involve young people in SDG-related work.

Nothing short of a human revolution would be an appropriate response to the depths of the multiple crises humanity faces. Yet universities are legacies of an era of monastic, hierarchical and siloed teaching and learning approaches. How can they be reinvented to become transformative?