Initiatives to support university students, academics and researchers in the beleaguered Gaza Strip are floundering as Israel intensifies its war on the enclave, despite an increase in student enrolment at certain universities. However, new initiatives are underway to ensure academia is not erased.

Gaza university presidents have issued a joint call for practical, structured, enduring partnerships with international higher education institutions to help ensure higher education continues for Gaza’s students despite the widespread destruction. University World News talked to leaders of the three main universities.

The Arab region’s share in global productivity of scientific research papers related to Sustainable Development Goal 6 – clean water and sanitation – has grown by an unprecedented 243.5%, over eight years, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This is despite research gaps that hinder progress.

Physicists from universities across Africa want to pool resources and skills to build the continent’s first home-produced quantum computer.
The initiative would allow more African researchers to do vital experimental work, and it represents an opportunity to develop skills in what many view as a strategically important field.

Broadening access to university – especially for students from diverse or disadvantaged backgrounds – does not just help more people attend university. It also enhances the quality and transformative potential of the education itself, for everyone involved, says Professor Fernando Reimers of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The Secretary General of the All-Africa Students Union Peter Kwasi Kodjie is very clear in his vision that Education for Sustainable Development must not just be a theoretical framework but a practical tool for activating the holistic development of students and young people across Africa.

New Zealand’s Te Wananga o Aotearoa – one of the nation’s Maori tertiary education institutions – illustrates how culture can help improve education among an indigenous population alongside a Western education system, improving educational access and success and delivering high-level qualifications relevant to today’s world.

Sustainability-focussed projects can easily be introduced in any discipline. Students at TU Dublin in Ireland are made aware of sustainability issues and solutions and they work in teams on real-world problems, which gives them a sense of belonging. This increases the chances of student success, says the university’s Dr Brian Gormley.

Five women scientists from different world regions were honoured at the 2025 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards for their groundbreaking work in the physical sciences, mathematics and computer science. Here, they reveal some of the passion that got them to the top.

Most leading universities are steeped in an illustrious past, but the world’s first AI university – MBZUAI in the UAE – is all about the future. There has been head-spinning expansion from a small postgraduate institution four years ago to more than 560 postgraduate researchers today.

University leaders, government ministers, higher education stakeholders and private donors gathered last month at Finland’s Aalto University to mark the pre-launch of the second European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, or ELLIS Institute, which aims to develop AI and machine learning and transform R&D.

University models urgently need rethinking to prepare for a future of omnipresent AI, says Andrea Renda, director of research at Brussels think tank CEPS and digital policy professor at the European University Institute. Universities need to educate augmented humans who thrive in the age of AI.

Two academics at Vilnius University in Lithuania were among the first in the world to develop “personal AI knowledge twins” – avatars, trained on the law lecturers’ knowledge, teaching and publications – and integrate them into a live course to provide support for students around the clock.

Higher education institutions are forming national, regional and pan-European networks to manage the advance of AI and emerging technologies. They are pooling available knowledge and expertise across institutions and sharing strategies and infrastructures to drive the responsible and ethical use of AI.

Universities are seeing a gap among students in their knowledge and use of generative AI, which they say risks getting wider and eventually becoming apparent in the labour market, the 2025 European University Association AI Conference heard. There is also a growing gap among lecturers.

Artificial intelligence has huge potential, and universities are helping to further integrate this technology into wider society, said experts at the 2025 European University Association AI Conference. But they also expressed caution, warning that generative AI is not a panacea for all challenges.

Italy’s University of Florence took a dynamic and participatory approach to developing generative AI guidelines for teachers and students, Professor Maria Ranieri told a best-practice session at the 2025 European University Association AI Conference. “We engaged diverse stakeholders to ensure the guidelines address real-world challenges,” she said.

Young people across Africa are eager for educational opportunities that flow from the internationalisation of education and want to benefit from the same exposure as that enjoyed by their international counterparts outside the continent. But, say experts, Africa lacks a coherent continental plan.

Universities should rethink how they lead, teach, research and serve communities, and learning institutions should move beyond institutional silos and national boundaries to embrace a regional identity that is united by purpose and empowered by institutional leadership.

The need for diversification of international student markets has never been greater as government visa restrictions and unrealistic university targets for growth cause headaches for the world’s major recruiting countries, according to some of the big guns of global higher education.

Higher education stakeholders say a new study that asks how international PhD students feel about living and studying in Sweden is an indictment of the current migration system. Not one of the 40 students interviewed said they would recommend studying in Sweden to others.

The proliferation of new threats against academic and intellectual freedoms across Africa has emanated from the deepening of neoliberal cultures in society and in higher education institutions. Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need for a drive to safeguard these freedoms across Africa.

African universities are caught in a colonial and neoliberal trap that they must escape in order to provide “authentic learning” – even though this will likely take decades, says Fikile Vilakazi, the director of the gender equity unit at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

On 9 April, the Great Zimbabwe University suspended a student for two semesters for posting “disparaging remarks” against the university management, and allegedly inciting other students on a WhatsApp group. He is part of a growing list of students who have been disciplined for activism.

The imminent closure of the Conflict Observatory-Ukraine, based at Yale University’s Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab, which has tracked Russia’s forced removal of thousands of Ukrainians – including almost 20,000 children – is a threat to the very ‘ecosystem’ of humanitarian labs.

A decade after students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa sparked a global reckoning with the legacy of colonialism in higher education, the institution marked the 10th anniversary of the #Rhodes Must Fall movement – which reverberated far and wide under the social media hashtag #RMF.

The only way to chart a path for Africa’s rise out of poverty over the next 100 years is by adopting a form of development which begins to take seriously humans’ relationship with nature, according to Cameroonian public intellectual Achille Mbembe.

A new study on equity, mutual benefits and sustainability in higher education partnerships across Sub-Saharan Africa offers key insights into existing practices, challenges and opportunities for fostering balanced and impactful collaborations between African higher education institutions and international partners.

Universities must abandon old-fashioned ideas about their roles and the kinds of qualifications they offer if they are to meet student needs and serve the public good, says Peter Wells, the head of education at UNESCO’s regional office for Southern Africa.

Increasing investments by academic institutions in interdisciplinarity are not just boosting flexibility and lateral thinking, they are strengthening the ability of universities to support sustainability worldwide. Oxford University Press has just launched an online series of interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences.

There’s been a tidal shift in thinking around futures studies in the past decade. “Universities are the laggards here,” says futurist Professor Sohail Inayatullah. “But working with students everywhere; agility, diversity, sustainability, AI, global thinking, even spiritual thinking – those come up more and more.”

The development of virtual global classrooms is helping universities and colleges to boost education for sustainable development by teaching students who otherwise would not have access to higher education and by facilitating interactions that prompt the invention of global solutions to sustainability challenges.

New academic reflections as part of a discourse about the crisis facing postcolonial African higher education are shedding more light on the role of political, economic and social influences on struggles and strained relations between the African ruling elites and public universities, staff unions and students.

Africa’s development depends on the higher education sector embracing change and producing leaders capable of addressing the complex governance and technological issues that will determine the continent’s future, says Patrick Awuah, the founder of Ghana’s first private university.

The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, or STIAS, Africa’s only independent institute for advanced study and the sole one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It has hosted about 900 fellows since its inception, including several Nobel laureates.

Universities in Africa should be prioritising the production of skilled graduates rather than knowledge, which they can access through other means, says Ghanaian entrepreneur Fred Swaniker, who is the founder and chief executive of a network of higher education institutions called the African Leadership Group.

Several regional initiatives allied with increasing digitalisation have led to greater student and graduate mobility and boosted knowledge production across east Africa, says Dr James Jowi, principal education officer at the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat.

As challenges become more interconnected, universities are uniquely placed to link research with practical solutions, connect local initiatives to global frameworks, and strengthen ties between academia and society. The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs provide a framework for universities to advance internationalisation through partnerships that drive real change.

Contestation over the nature of knowledge is mounting as new universities and think tanks challenge traditional approaches to higher education across Africa, says Professor Tade Aina, senior director of the higher education and research in Africa programme at the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

DeepSeek’s meteoric, interdisciplinary success starkly highlights inefficiencies embedded within many American universities. While deep specialisation has been the engine behind countless scientific breakthroughs, it is increasingly misaligned with the cross-disciplinary nature of contemporary AI research.

At the beginning of 2024, African leaders adopted education as a continental priority under the theme, ‘Educate an African fit for the 21st century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality, and relevant learning in Africa’.

Incorporating Indigenous knowledges into Education for Sustainable Development does not mean simply re-presenting ideas of First Nations’ stories or peoples in curricula; it’s about involving Indigenous peoples in university education to ensure their knowledge is respected and research is useful to Indigenous communities.

Africa’s scientific landscape faces twin challenges: low research output and limited participation in global scientific discourse. This hinders the continent’s ability to respond to its ‘wicked problems’ and contribute to global knowledge and sustainability. The pioneering Future Africa initiative is taking up the challenge.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial assessment of the direction of all education has told universities that they must anticipate change in an uncertain world being transformed by generative AI, as they consider how to promote the global goal of sustainability.

The greatest challenges facing universities and educators in using generative AI for student assessment are the sheer speed at which the higher education sector is evolving and an exponential increase in the capabilities of AI tools, a University World News-ABET webinar heard this week.

Dr Josephine Aikpitanyi is on a mission to empower African women to take control of their own health. This Nigerian postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain in Belgium is challenging traditional norms and revolutionising the way we think about maternal healthcare by exploring the link between personality traits and healthcare choices.

A scholarly journal that is national and multidisciplinary is key to bridging not only the divides between disciplines, but also those between policy-makers and policy implementers, on the one hand, and scientists and scholars, on the other. The South African Journal of Science has achieved this in different ways during its 120-year history.

Male Syrian university students managed to escape compulsory military service in Bashar al-Assad’s army through a number of strategies, including ‘deliberate failing’ of their courses or by travelling abroad, a new investigation published six days after the end of Assad’s rule has revealed.

The Council for At-Risk Academics was founded in 1933 to help scientists, professors and researchers flee Nazi Germany. Today it serves as a lifeline for at-risk academics from all countries, including Ukraine – academics who seek not only safety but the right to keep working.

Several universities in rice-producing countries are working with students, farmers and communities to help them switch to growing ‘greener’ or more environmentally friendly varieties and to employ more sustainable farming methods that use only organic fertilisers. But not everyone is on board.

A groundbreaking report provides valuable guidance in a field that turns out to have been substantially overlooked – communicating fundamental research. It marks the culmination of a five-year study between several international collaborators in the field.

African climate stakeholders attending COP29 have called for more green technology training in specialised higher education institutions as a transformative opportunity to curb surging unemployment and empower African graduates to take over the relay in the climate change drive.

For thousands of years, the Nile River has been a vital resource for millions of north-east Africans who rely on it for irrigation, drinking water, fishing and hydroelectric power. The Nile River flows over 6,650km before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. With the Nile being shared by 11 countries, disputes persist.

Professors say that using games to teach history produces consistently higher levels of engagement among students and greater commitment to reading, including primary sources. Students say they gain a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of the motivations of historical figures and movements.

As the African continent marks Africa Universities’ Day on 12 November, University World News asked student leaders across the continent to envisage the ‘University of the Future’. Whether from the Gambia, Namibia or Kenya, the leaders touched on similar themes, sending strong messages to the higher education sector and governments.

Singapore, the Philippines, India and Thailand are among countries in Asia that are taking seriously the call from international agencies and industry for more graduates with ‘green job’ skills by revising their higher education curricula and changing the nature of academic learning.

‘Green skills’ are the skills required in many people’s day-to-day work and are offered by universities across many disciplines. But they are rarely taught in engineering, a profession crucial to achieving global sustainability. Engineering for One Planet tackles this problem with curriculum guides.

As markets shift towards jobs that promote sustainability, prompted by concerns about limiting potential runaway climate change, higher education institutions the world over are being encouraged to more fully integrate sustainability skills into curricula in order to prepare students for green employment.

There are major skills-related disruptions ahead for higher education, as the sector comes under governmental and labour market pressure to produce graduates – including micro-credential graduates – with skills needed for a ‘greening’ world, says Professor Patrick Paul Walsh, director of the United Nations SDG Academy.

Sir Edward Byrne has led three top universities on three continents. He talks to University World News about how being president of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology compares to his experiences leading Monash University in Australia and King’s College London in the United Kingdom.

A provincial university in the north-east of Thailand is at the forefront of a campaign using digital technologies to create ‘smart cities’ in partnership with local municipalities and central government agencies, and to build resources and tools that can be used in mitigating natural disasters.

What does it take to win a Nobel Prize? What happens in the committees that decide who receives such a coveted honour? These and other questions were answered with flair at a recent lecture delivered as part of the Nobel in Africa series.

A study finding that only about 17% of the library and information science journals indexed by Scopus are multilingual offers insights into gaps in our understanding of non-English library and information science journals indexed in global databases and mulls the possibility of an alternative multilingual index.

Africa’s biggest international study destination, South Africa, could gain from international students who now face additional barriers to studying in the big four destinations of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and Australia due to policy changes. The country’s larger metropolitan universities would benefit the most.

A Nobel symposium held in South Africa this week has focused on cardiovascular medicine on the continent, while simultaneously showcasing the crucial contributions of African scientists in this important field. In 2022, the first-ever Nobel Symposium outside of Scandinavia was hosted at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

A recently released publication by the International Association of University Presidents, as part of its Women’s Leadership Initiative, presents 10 personal stories about the challenges faced by senior women leaders in academia, including ‘imposter syndrome’, and highlights the value of having a robust mentor or coach.

Both the outgoing and incoming presidents of the International Association of University Presidents will have assumed their positions in a time of different but, at the time, unimaginable challenges. We examine the legacy of the former president and the unconventional vision of the incoming leader.

In the days after the full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, as dark smoke rose steadily from collapsed buildings and burning oil depots, Ukraine’s ecological scientists were already totalling up what they knew was an ecological crisis in the making.

Some of the children who survived abductions by the Boko Haram terrorist group in Nigeria and have been released have gone on to university study, despite indoctrination attempts by the group which forbids Western education. Despite their past traumas, these students are determined to succeed.

A multi-partner research consortium will conduct global studies into how artificial intelligence can best be deployed within higher education, uniting expert researchers from the Global North and South with the aim of harnessing AI in the service of quality education for all.

Although there are pockets of institutional excellence when it comes to the incorporation of sustainability education into African universities’ teaching, research and outreach activities, experts say there is some way to go before sustainability achieves its rightful place in African higher education.

The University of Victoria in Canada’s temperate rain forest zone, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, has blazed a global trail in integrating education for sustainable development with an expansive range of courses and activities, deepening its sustainability research and learning impact.

Last year Leuphana University Lüneburg won Germany’s most prestigious award for sustainability in educational institutions. The university in northern Germany has been on a three-decade sustainability journey, embracing a ‘whole institution’ approach and infusing sustainability into all aspects of its teaching, research and operation.

AshokaX, a lifelong learning initiative from Ashoka University, recently partnered with the global Environmental Defense Fund to lead the Climate Corps Fellowship in India. The fellowship aims to nurture an army of climate warriors and leverage catalytic action towards tackling climate issues.

Professor Atsufumi Yokoi, vice-president for global engagement at Okayama University in Japan, isn’t going to stop talking about the criticality of incorporating education for sustainable development into higher education. He drives the Okayama ESD model that is deeply embedded in regional traditions.

With 190 Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development in more than 65 countries across the world, the Global RCE Network headquartered at the United Nations University in Japan could be the ultimate ‘learning organisation’ in the realm of sustainability.