9 April 2023  Issue No: 734

Universities in Africa should make the most of their current ‘window of opportunity’ to access part of the €150 billion (US$163 billion) that the European Union agreed to invest in the areas of public health, a green transition, innovation and technology as well as capacities for science.

Black scientists wait 22% longer to hear if their papers have been accepted for publication than do white authors of similar papers published in the same journal in the same year, says a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or PNAS.

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.

An academic who began her career in South Africa and rose to become what she calls the ‘accidental vice-chancellor’ of a troubled British university recounts her five-year stint at the helm in a new report published by the United Kingdom’s Higher Education Policy Institute.

A group of innovative universities in Sub-Saharan Africa are working on a common problem. How can they bring economic opportunities to the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population? Their solutions to upscale training in digital skills could make all the difference to the continent’s future.

Internal political decisions as well as country realignments and geopolitical tensions are impacting higher education decisions and international student mobility. Universities need to stop looking for the next China, diversify their international recruitment efforts and be adaptable to changing geopolitics.

Two global university networks have joined forces to support a collection of exceptional researchers from around the world – both faculty and graduate students – who are conducting engaged research that goes beyond academic study and includes a commitment to long-term sustainable community partnerships.

A historic victory for climate action campaigners at the UN General Assembly – ensuring clarification of the consequences for nations that fail to take climate action – resulted from a campaign that started as a final-year project conceived by law students at the University of the South Pacific.

Although Unsettling the University: Confronting the colonial foundations of US higher education announces that the book’s focus is the “nation currently known as the United States”, the bulk of the introduction is a masterful deconstruction of Professor Sharon Stein’s own university: the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Universities are well-placed to lead the shift towards the development of a circular mindset which recognises the interconnection and interdependence between humankind and nature – a necessary step in human evolution if we are to create a more sustainable world for future generations.