2 July 2020  Issue No: 276

In respect of the PhD, at least, quality would better be served by a peer review model rooted in collaborative networks and partnerships rather than in bureaucratic overlordship.

A survey of online and distance education at 15 institutions of higher education in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia highlights the centrality of human relations and provides reasons to be optimistic about the future of learning.

“If the higher education sector believes that digital education should replace contact teaching and learning, it runs the risk of producing highly qualified people with severely underdeveloped human or social skills. They will just be robots.”

Eighty law students of Kenya’s University of Nairobi have gone to court challenging the use of online learning platforms for classes and scheduled examinations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a significant emotional and psychological toll on university communities. In this, the fifth of a six-part dialogue series, hosted by the Alliance for African Partnership or AAP, university leaders discussed the lessons learned from and responses to mental health impacts of COVID-19 in higher education. The next webinar – on opportunities for partnership and engagement – is on 8 July.

The COVID-19 crisis has driven universities to the point when they cannot but innovate: they need to transform to stay in the game. To succeed without betraying their values, they need new solutions and the safest way to find them is to experiment.

International students are not just affected by the general mental health issues that arise out of the pandemic, but by the stress of trying to figure out what their next educational steps should be. What can departments and universities do to support them?

Asia and Pacific Rim university leaders say their institutions moved quickly to shut down and set up online when COVID-19 hit them out of the blue – and students have gained from more personalised learning. But bringing students back onto campus is a more complex challenge.

Corruption in Higher Education: Global challenges and responses, edited by Elena Denisova-Schmidt (pictured), has just been published. The scope of the book is as far-reaching as the corruption it describes, which is serious and is steadily eroding societies, universities and authorities. This special report reviews the corruption in universities that the book reveals, its manifestations and definitions, and some new approaches to tackling the problem.