3 September 2023  Issue No: 752

In keeping with their longstanding ban on education for women and girls, Taliban authorities in Afghanistan stopped a group of aspirational female students from boarding a plane to Dubai where they were to take up university scholarships funded by an Emirati philanthropist and businessman.

A total of 104 government and private higher education institutions in Sudan, as well as research centres and the National Fund for Student Welfare have been damaged and vandalised since April when the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces became embroiled in a war.

China’s generative AI regulations – the world’s first – do not appear to be as limiting for researchers in universities and companies as some initial drafts circulating earlier this year had proposed – a signal that China is keen not to stall research in this area.

An emerging global movement to transform engineering education, aimed at achieving greater peace, sustainability and resilience, draws on many disciplines as well as engineering’s own rich toolbox to find new ways to solve the pressing problems that increasingly confront our planet.

We live in a world of information overload, but too much choice may lead us to spurn different and new perspectives and opt for the safety of familiar voices. How does the propensity to live in our own echo chambers affect higher education research?

The 60-year history of the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning can be traced through several key research programmes that have helped shape higher education, from its burgeoning importance in the post-independence era to today’s calls for greater flexibility and student choice.

The Southern African Regional Universities Association will be driving the ‘Engaged University’ initiative that calls for the use of participatory approaches towards the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs at higher education institutions within the Southern African Development Community.

Zimbabwe’s government has deported British academic Professor Stephen Chan, accusing him of plotting to destabilise the country after the general elections on 23 August. Chan, a professor of world politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, has been doing community work in Africa.