28 May 2023  Issue No: 741

Publicly funded research outputs should be immediately and openly available to all without barriers such as subscription fees or paywalls, say European scientific community leaders who welcomed a recent 20-point plan agreed by the Council of the European Union to encourage open science.

Women and older international students will feel the brunt of a new clampdown on foreign students bringing dependants when they come to the United Kingdom to study on one-year taught masters degree courses, say higher education experts. Students from India and Nigeria will be disproportionately affected.

Despite the fact that many students from South Asia in the United Kingdom and Australia plan to stay and work in their host countries after graduation, there are barriers to employability which operate at the individual, institutional and at national policy level.

Given the growth in doctoral graduate numbers, not all graduates can be accommodated in traditional academic or research careers. Doctoral education needs to prepare future graduates for diverse options, not only in higher education but in business, government, the non-profit sector and self-employment.

African countries have been urged to develop new universities that are entrepreneurial from the outset to counter challenges posed by unemployment, hunger and the vulnerabilities of health risks and climate change as well as competition for scarce natural resources, according to the Economic Commission for Africa.

To boost their global rankings, some Saudi universities are enticing highly cited researchers from around the world to switch their primary academic affiliation to that of the Saudi institution, a practice that scientists are worried will dent the credibility of science and must end.