The OECD's annual report on the status of education in member countries, Education at a Glance 2013, was released last Tuesday. The five articles in this edition cover some of the higher education topics in the 440-page report, and will be followed next week by accounts on the performance of a range of countries.

The various methods used to rank the world's universities have all attracted criticisms and generated ongoing controversies. The articles that follow consider some of the issues surrounding the creation of university league tables.

The 6th International Conference on Higher Education organised by the Global University Network for Innovation – GUNI – was held in Barcelona in mid-May. The theme was “Knowledge, Transformation and Higher Education”, and the conference explored ways in which community engagement enhances teaching, learning and research in higher education as well as challenges, new approaches and trends. University World News was there.

In this special three-part series are accounts by academics and University World News journalists revealing how PhD students in more than two dozen countries face the challenges of completing their studies in another country – or, as in Greece, are fleeing economic disaster at home. The second set of reports will be published next week.

University World News launches a new Special Report on “Higher Education Philanthropy in Africa”, which will comprise a series of articles on the involvement of major donors in universities across the continent. There has been intense debate around development aid to Africa, and the series will paint a picture of donor funding of African higher education, and analyse its impacts and implications.

The British Council’s Going Global 2013 conference on “Internationalising Higher Education” was held in the Dubai World Trade Centre from 4-6 March and attended by 1,300 higher education policy-makers and practitioners from around the world. This is the second set of articles on the event to be published by University World News – click here for the full coverage.

More than 400 people gathered in Washington DC last week for the annual conference of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, CHEA, and the first annual meeting of the CHEA International Quality Group. University World News interviewed CHEA President Judith S Eaton and we publish her pre-conference commentary on the ‘credit hour’.

Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO, signalled that her organisation’s focus on primary education was expanding to include more work supporting higher education, at the World Innovation Summit for Education held in Doha last week. But insiders suggested otherwise.

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI, held its Higher Education Summit 2012 in New Delhi last week. University World News was there.