The third edition of Student Affairs and Services in Higher Education: Global foundations, issues, and best practices is an enormous volume, involving around 250 authors and others from 125 countries. The open access book was recently published by the International Association of Student Affairs and Services with Deutsches Studentenwerk. In this three-part Special Report, authors describe and interpret the landscape of student affairs globally, developments and issues, achievements and challenges.

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.

Shadi Khan Saif and Yojana Sharma Iran, which has had a high incidence of the coronavirus COVID-19, has found it spread outwards from the city of Qom which has many religious seminaries, mostly run by the state, and many international students and pilgrims, to neighbouring Pakistan, Afghanistan and even India.

Media and higher education experts gathered in Toronto, Canada, on 12-14 June for the Worldviews 2019 Conference, to discuss democracy and the changing power relations of higher education and the media in the Global North and South – including the concept of expertise in a post-truth world and the voices amplified by emerging technologies. University World News is a sponsor.

The 2019 European University Association or EUA Annual Conference was held at Sorbonne University in Paris on 11-12 April. The theme was "Driving innovation in Europe’s universities". As creators and providers of knowledge and places of societal reflection, said the EUA, "universities have a central role in shaping the future and in nurturing the next generation of leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers". University World News reports.

Paul Ashwin An oversimplified approach to higher education emphasises generic skills and labour market outcomes. Instead, it should be based on how engagement with knowledge can transform students’ understanding of the world and themselves. Universities should commit to making this powerful knowledge accessible to all students.

As the political crisis in the United Kingdom deepened over the impasse on which Brexit deal to agree with Europe, the 2019 International Higher Education Forum, organised by Universities UK International, examined how UK universities can continue to develop internationalisation in the event of a hard Brexit or no deal, University World News reports.

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the CHEA International Quality Group (CIQG) held their annual conferences last week. On the agenda were how to build trust in universities in a hostile environment, how to address corruption in higher education and how to adapt higher education to a world of changing demand and innovative modes of provision. University World News was the media partner.

A workshop in Cape Town, a conference in Stellenbosch, and a recently published volume on the contribution of universities to place-based development form the basis for this edition’s special report examining the opportunities for South African universities – like their counterparts around the world – to embrace the roles of place-makers, engines of innovation and economic development, and centres of knowledge-production which seek to inform local decision- and policy-making.

The Sixth Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) Biennial Conference, also known as the African Higher Education Week, took place in Nairobi, Kenya, from 22-26 October under the theme “Aligning African universities to accelerate attainment of Africa’s Agenda 2063”. The conference brought together stakeholders in higher education and agriculture from across the continent.