Under India’s ambitious overhaul of higher education, the country aims to internationalise universities, taking advantage of strong domestic offerings. But its elite institutions continue to struggle to attract overseas students to their Indian campuses. At the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — arguably the country’s most prestigious universities and its best known higher education brand […]
A rise in the number of international students from Europe going to Canada seems to be the “product” of Brexit, according to an analysis of latest trends in immigration data. Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the number of study permit holders in 2021 from various countries show there is an increase of […]
South Korea’s incoming education minister may struggle to make the sweeping reforms necessary to address critical problems in the country’s higher education sector.
Kim In-Chul, who is likely to assume the post after president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol takes office in June, served two consecutive terms as president of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, where he was a […]
Afghanistan: Grim future
Academics in Afghanistan fear that the past semester could be their last before the Taliban closes universities ahead of major reforms.
The country’s fundamentalist regime, which took over nine months ago, has already put its stamp on higher education. It has forced out female faculty members and segregated students by gender, establishing […]
Oz Chinese graduates
Chinese graduates of Australian universities are ill-suited to their country’s workforce needs, often applying at the wrong time, in the wrong way and with wrong credentials for the most promising job openings. Research by Beijing-based recruitment platform Lockin has identified a “mismatch” between the career aspirations of Chinese returnees from Australian […]
Incidents of cheating in online examinations have hit a record high, according to proctoring data that shows that one in 14 students was caught breaking the rules last year. Analysis of data on 3 million tests globally that used the ProctorU invigilation platform found that “confirmed breaches” of test regulations — incidents where there is […]
Russia: Student protests crackdown
Russian institutions are leading the charge in cracking down on student opposition to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, with hundreds of students estimated to have been expelled already. With Russian academia increasingly cut off from the outside world, student dissidents are finding themselves targeted by the very institutions tasked with […]
Sabine Saurugger (left) & Klaus Kinzler: Islamophobia row
A university leader has called for “calm and rationality” as French academics fear being caught in the crossfire of increasingly bitter culture wars in the run-up to the country’s presidential election.
Sabine Saurugger, director of Sciences Po Grenoble, hit the headlines in January after suspending Klaus Kinzler, […]
Nanjing Integrated Circuit University
China’s new crop of privately backed, industry-focused universities could help meet skills gaps and jump-start innovation. At the end of 2021, Chinese businessman Cao Dewang came one step closer to establishing his institution when he signed an agreement with the city government of Fuzhou to build a university for developing […]
Yury Chekhovich
About one in 20 papers recently published in Russian journals is an exact or near duplicate of an existing article, with some pieces reproduced as many as 27 times across different publications, according to a study. While the problem of plagiarism in Russian academic papers is well- known, having resulted in hundreds […]
The institutions in the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings are united by their recent foundation dates; only universities aged 50 years and under are included in the annual list of the world’s top newcomers in higher education. But the stories and circumstances around their creation are very different.
There are institutions that already seem to […]
The sacking of three elected deans from Bogazici University could signal a renewed attack on institutional autonomy and freedom of speech in Turkey’s universities, warn scholars. The dismissal of Ozlem Berk Albachten, Metin Ercan and Yasemin Bayyurt by Turkey’s Higher Education Council (YOK) follows a tumultuous year at Istanbul’s premier university, which has been riven […]
Sierra Leone minister Sengeh (right): crime victims
Sarah didn’t know she was pregnant until teachers told her. In 2020, her state-run boarding school in Tanzania ordered tests for all the girls returning after a three-month closure caused by Covid-19. When her pregnancy was confirmed, she was expelled and sent home. She was less than […]
South Korea university graduates: birth rate threat
Nearly half of South Korea’s universities could close in the next quarter-century as the country’s population continues to shrink, with regional institutions especially hard hit, a respected academic warns.
Dong-Kyu Lee, professor of disaster management at Dong-A University, says he expects only 190 out of 385 existing universities […]
As the chapter closes on the 2019 killing of Bangladeshi student Abrar Fahad, advocates say universities should be doing more to prevent violent behaviour still rampant on the country’s public campuses. Last December, a Dhaka court issued death sentences to 20 students at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) for Fahad’s murder. But […]
President Macron: continental identity quest
A French proposal to create a ‘European Academy’ could help to rejuvenate efforts to build a common continental identity. Under France’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, which runs to June 2022, President Emmanuel Macron has proposed “a European Academy bringing together a hundred or so intellectuals […]
Covid-19 has elicited creative solutions to food poverty on Australian campuses, as students — particularly from overseas — find inventive ways to beat hunger.
Foreign students are now reserving refrigerator racks in shared kitchens to deposit leftover food for friends in need. Other stratagems include “clubbing together” to cover membership costs at bulk food retailers such […]
Thousands of women were forced to leave their classrooms after the Taliban took over Afghanistan — and now, months later, they have little hope of resuming studies under the extremist regime. But the president of the University of the People (UoPeople) believes online courses may offer means of reaching them.
This non profit university offers online […]
Secondary class in Sobral: rebooting model
When Amaury Gomes began teaching history in Sobral in the mid-1990s, its schools were a mess. The city of 200,000 people lies in Ceara, a baking-hot north-eastern state that has one of Brazil’s highest rates of poverty. When local officials ordered tests in 2001 they found that 40 […]
Vaxxing at Georgia University: compulsion blocked
Even as the Covid Omicron variant surge is shutting down US campuses, dozens of institutions have quickly reversed mandatory vaccine policies after a federal judge blocked a Biden administration requirement for them. These institutions, mainly in politically conservative southern and western parts of the US, suggest that the […]
Pfizer said it was changing plans and testing three doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in babies and preschoolers instead of the usual two.
The addition of an extra dose came after a preliminary analysis found 2- to 4-year-olds didn’t have as strong an immune response as expected to special low-dose shots.
Pfizer had planned to release data […]
Japanese universities’ challenges in attracting overseas talent and promoting the use of English in scholarship are well-documented. Yet, on an island hundreds of miles south of Tokyo, a small graduate school has achieved a level of internationalisation and research impact almost unmatched in the country.
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), founded by the Japanese […]
If you were asked to name the fastest-rising higher education system in the world, the likely answer would be China. Results of the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 provide compelling evidence. The country now has two universities in the Top 20 for the first time, with Peking and Tsinghua jointly ranked #16, […]
The persistent partisan split in the US over COVID is increasingly dividing higher education over vaccination rules, stimulating protests, lawsuits, resignations, infections and renewed migration to online teaching. As with the broader battle lines in US society, the fight against requiring proof of vaccination status is most prevalent in politically conservative areas, often involving local […]
Micro-degrees are “gig credentials for the gig economy,” exacerbating the tenuous existence of struggling workers and turning universities into job coaching services that save companies money on in-house training, according to two academics.
Wheelahan and Moodie: precarious work certification
Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie have delivered a scathing assessment of an educational trend sweeping the […]
Education activists and leaders are desperately trying to rescue Afghan scholars — particularly girls and women — from the Taliban, while experts warn that the country could lose the gains it has made in education, hard-won over the past 20 years. Almost immediately after the Taliban’s takeover of the country following the withdrawal of US […]
School bells rang after a hiatus of 543 days in Bangladesh on Sunday, as tens of thousands of students returned to classes, amid an ease in the coronavirus situation in the country and the vaccination programme picking up pace.
News channels aired footages of students in school uniform entering campuses with broad smiles, visible despite masks. […]
China is set to become one of the first countries to make mental health a compulsory credit-bearing module for all undergraduate students, in a sign of growing concern over the issue. But experts are doubtful about whether this initiative offers a genuine solution.
A notice from the ministry of education puts mental health on a par […]
MIT’s Krishna Rajagopal
The dean of digital learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has resigned as a staff revolt against the sale of non-profit online course platform edX to for-profit competitor 2U grows. Krishna Rajagopal, who has announced his departure, told colleagues that he had “serious continuing reservations about the path forward […]
French historians have raised the alarm that a new terrorism and intelligence law will stop the release of state military and security archival documents, amid accusations that elements in the government are deliberately trying to conceal the country’s role in the Algerian war of independence.
Historians say that for the past two years, they have had […]
A member of the family of Azerbaijan’s autocratic ruler sits on the board of a University of Oxford research centre that studies the country, raising conflict of interest concerns for academics. A body representing Armenian scholars expressed concern that the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, founded in 2018 by a £10 million (Rs.102.5 crore) donation […]
The arrival in the UK of a potential 100,000 international students from Covid red-list countries in the coming months presents a “clear quarantine-capacity problem” that could “overwhelm” the system, with allowing universities to use their own accommodation for quarantine one possible solution discussed in the sector.
Foreign students in the UK: red list system […]
If you ever want to see mathematicians get really excited, ask them about Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk. Writing on a blackboard with the deluxe Japanese chalk made of oyster shells is “like skiing on fresh powder, or waterskiing at dawn on a calm lake,” says Dave Bayer, professor of mathematics at Columbia University’s Barnard College.
Wei Ho, […]
Academics in Turkey say they have won a rare victory for university autonomy after a politically appointed rector was dismissed following six months of protest. The sacking of Melih Bulu, a former ruling party candidate appointed at Bogazici University by the president in January, they hope, could be a turning point in the fight for […]
More than one in three of India’s Central universities is without a permanent vice-chancellor, raising concerns about growing political interference in appointments and flagging questions about the planned transformation of the country’s higher education system. At least 21 of the 54 Central institutions — which are funded by the national government — do […]
Precariously employed German academics have forced the country’s research ministry to take down a video that argued that temporary academic contracts are good for the economy and prevent one generation “clogging up” scholarly positions.
The outpouring of online fury under the hashtag #IchbinHanna — named after a fictionalised junior researcher featured in the video […]
Edinburgh University’s Harmon: positive student reaction
In the sort of formal ceremony beloved in this part of the world, VIPs posed on stage, holding shovels decorated with giant gold bows, to mark the launch of a University of Hong Kong (HKU) campus redevelopment project.
The event held in January, could be […]
Chinese coaching school: heavy financial burden
Until children reach the age of about 15 in China, education is free. So why is it that more than half of a typical family’s spending goes on it? The answer is coaching/ cramming classes: a financial burden so great that it is often said to […]
President Ivan Duque: bungled response
If all goes to plan, schools in Colombia (pop.50 million) will finally reopen over the next two weeks, with most children back by July 15. Better late than never. Schools in Mexico and Brazil resumed in-person teaching weeks earlier. By contrast, in Colombia children have borne one […]
MIT’s Reich: widespread disillusionment
BIG SHOCKS HAVE SOMETIMES CHANGED schooling for the better. The Second World War midwifed the Butler Act in Britain, which increased years of compulsory schooling and abolished fees still charged by many government schools. After Hurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans, officials there embarked on sweeping school reforms. Nine […]
Eight women scientists of India who made history Since time immemorial, India is famed for its rich contribution to the field of science and mathematics. In fact the ... 
Jammu & Kashmir: NEET, JEE free coaching for tribal students The Tribal Affairs Department (TAD) of Jammu and Kashmir has launched the first of its kind initiative for coaching of ... 
Confusion over this year’s UVCE admissions after university status Reshma Ravishanker
Even as a bill has granted the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering a university status in 2021, the college ... 
The Importance of Art Education in Schools Art education means different things to different people, but the crux of it, is that it imparts knowledge and education ... 
