11 June 2023  Issue No: 743

Ongoing attacks on infrastructure since the start of the armed conflict in Sudan in mid-April, including on universities, hospitals, libraries and research centres, have intensified calls from academic and human rights circles for the need to safeguard higher education institutions during military clashes and to rebuild the sector in war-torn areas.

Ending years of intense political debate, Norway’s parliament voted this week to abolish the free-tuition policy for international students outside of the European Economic Area and Switzerland, leaving many people in the sector concerned about the future of the principle of free education.

An international and multidisciplinary research group is trying to make sense of the contemporary global science landscape by investigating and developing approaches to managing the opportunities and risks of international scientific collaboration amidst rising geopolitical competition and the prevailing logic of zero-sum competition.

Compared to other countries in Asia, such as China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Singapore, which represent a rather saturated market for United Kingdom transnational education or TNE, Vietnam represents a growing opportunity for the UK due to its increasing GDP and limited local education provision.

The European Students’ Union has taken an historic decision to create a conference of student bodies in the European University alliances to give a more direct voice to student representatives within the alliances, to disseminate good practice and to tackle students’ shared challenges.

Universities are in a unique position to provide innovative solutions to challenges facing the African continent, but if universities are to be the engine of development, research must be approached in a trans-disciplinary manner, according to Sharon Fonn, professor of public health at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

An edited book containing contributions from authors from different fields and parts of the world provides eye-opening insight into various aspects of higher education credential fraud and highlights the erosion of trust in academia and academics that consistently accompanies such cases.

In the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2023, which are geared to assessing institutions’ contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Australian and Canadian universities dominate the top 10 of the overall category, but Australia takes first place in seven of the individual 17 SDGs.