How are African university presses, which have an important mission and unique contribution to make to the African knowledge base, faring under the global scholarly publishing industry’s current 'market' conditions?

The Education at a Glance 2017 report, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, on 12 September, provides key information on the state of education around the world. University World News highlights its findings on tertiary education.

More than half of Australian university students say they were sexually harassed on at least one occasion last year, and one in 14 were sexually assaulted at least once in 2015 or 2016, a survey of more than 30,000 students at 39 universities has found.

The Association of African Universities marked its Golden Jubilee Celebration at its 14th General Conference held in Accra, Ghana from 5-8 June under the theme ‘AAU@50: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects for Sustainable Development in Africa’. We capture some of the highlights of the conference in the first of our two-part special report.

The British Council’s Going Global 2017 conference for leaders of international education was held in London last week. The theme was “Global cities: connecting talent, driving change”. In a two-part special report (the second part will be published next week), University World News covers some of the highlights.

The European University Association or EUA 2017 Annual Conference, with the theme “Autonomy and Freedom: The future sustainability of universities”, was hosted by the University of Bergen in Norway on 6-7 April, and discussed how autonomy and freedom of universities can be linked to address the current political, economic and societal challenges in Europe.

The International Higher Education Forum organised by Universities UK on 21 March in London explored how universities in the United Kingdom can maximise the emerging international opportunities and overcome challenges resulting from the radical political shifts the UK has experienced over the last year. University World News covered the event.

The Global University Network for Innovation or GUNi's sixth Higher Education in the World report, entitled Towards a Socially Responsible University: Balancing the global with the local, deals with the dual responsibilities of universities at local and global scale. Some of the contributions to the report are republished in edited form in this special report.