19 November 2023  Issue No: 763

The 12% rise in international student numbers in the United States – the fastest growth rate in four decades – has pushed numbers almost back to pre-pandemic levels. While student numbers from India grew by 35%, students from China remain the biggest single national group, despite a slight decline in numbers.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has challenged higher education institutions to think carefully about the way they handle themselves in the context of strongly opposing views and when important freedoms – of expression and association – come up against security concerns and fears of alienating sections of their community.

A new online tool provides granular data about the economic contribution of international students in the United States, which totalled over US$40 billion in the 2022-23 academic year. Its launch follows the formation of a new coalition to increase enrolment and diversify the pool of international students.

A strong defence of academic freedom arises when universities are recognised as spaces for open debate and as legitimate and reliable sources of knowledge production. While a distinction between arguments, facts and opinion needs to be drawn, universities cannot cut themselves off from society.

It is vital for higher education institutions to consider how they can deliver the quality, diversity and flexibility students increasingly value and desire. The hard part, of course, is translating these discussions into tangible implementation and seeing genuine positive progress occur.

As the United Arab Emirates prepares to host COP28, the global summit on climate action and sustainable development, University World News is running a weekly Special Briefing exploring the contribution of Gulf states’ universities to climate action and to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

As student demand for higher education grows in India, the availability of high quality faculty is key to meeting the goal of quality education, but attracting such faculty comes with a number of challenges that call for careful planning and an understanding of national trends.

The winners of this year’s L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Young Talents Sub-Saharan Africa Awards included 25 PhD candidates and five post-doctoral researchers, who are spread across multiple fields of research to tackle major challenges to improve the quality of life in Africa and worldwide.

There have been 439 Palestinians from the university community killed and 11 higher education buildings completely or partially damaged since the start of the Israel-Palestine war on 7 October, according to the Palestinian government. Higher education has been severely disrupted.

With an eye to developing a clean, alternative aviation fuel to reduce carbon emissions, researchers at the United Arab Emirates University have been focusing on the production of jet fuel from sustainable resources such as halophytes, which are salt-tolerant plants that could be cultivated on a wider scale in the region’s coastal areas.