BRAZILIAN ACADEMICS HOPE THAT THE country’s upcoming final round of the presidential election on October 30 will bring an end to President Jair Bolsonaro’s “war on science”. But most admit that, even if the populist leader loses, his influence will be slow to fade.
All polls ahead of the first round of voting on October 2 […]
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA (CPC) congresses are rubber-stamp affairs. The 2,300 delegates of the 20th Congress that recently concluded in Beijing, had no chance of scuppering the decisions — already made in secret — that were unveiled at the event. Most of them had undergone training in a vast system of schools that the party […]
BITTER LEADERSHIP ROW AT THE WORLD’S most pan-national university has cost it almost half year’s revenue, in an escalation of the economically and politically fuelled funding insecurity that bedevils the institution. Staff at the University of the South Pacific (USP) say that the institution’s biggest contributor, the Fijian government, has withheld F$78 million (Rs.275 crore) […]
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A PARTY FOR WESTERNERS. Young men snogged in the corridor. Girls downed tumblers of wine. The real shock, though, was the hubbub of voices. Though this was a gathering of young Emiratis, almost everyone was chatting in English, nowadays the dominant tongue of Gulf countries.
On paper, Arabic is one of the […]
CHINESE UNIVERSITIES ARE CLOSING IN ON US global dominance of higher education, but internationalisation has proved to be a weak link for the Asian superpower, according to the latest edition of the Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings. The biggest global ranking to date reveals that the research supremacy of American universities is waning, in […]
FEARS OF A BROADER DRAFT COULD BE USED to suppress opposition to the Ukraine war and further limit free speech on Russian campuses, giving universities a “powerful tool” to silence potential dissenters. To date, the Kremlin has said it is drafting only reservists to fight in Ukraine, with the presidential decree explicitly exempting students at […]
A new university at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s planned megacity on the banks of the Red Sea could soon emerge as the country’s premier scientific institution with the backing of its powerful crown prince.
Billed as the sustainable city of the future and covering an area the size of Belgium, the $500 billion (Rs.39 lakh […]
A new requirement for Russian institutions to appoint rectors for students’ moral development is being interpreted as another sign of a country reverting to Soviet-style thought control.
Coined during the USSR era, the position of pro rector in charge of vospitatel’naya rabota — which roughly translates as ‘character-building’ — was once common in universities. Such individuals […]
If history is “a race between education and catastrophe”, as H.G. Wells once put it, education seemed until recently to be winning. In 1950, only about half of adults globally had any schooling; now at least 85 percent do. Between 2000 and 2018, the proportion of school-age children not enrolled in classes fell from 26 […]
A vote on whether Chile will accept a radical new constitution that enshrines bold commitments to higher education reform is on knife-edge as a crucial general election approaches. Public universities become free-of-charge as part of the wide-ranging changes to the system, which currently boasts some of the highest tuition fees in South America.
A draft of […]
Recent weeks have brought signs that China could be — slowly — starting to let in overseas students shut out of the country for over two years.
On June 20, Li Jiming, China’s ambassador to Bangladesh, announced that China is planning to allow international students to return, stating that Bangladeshis would be “first in line”. That […]
The recently reconstituted US Supreme Court is widely expected to rule against affirmative action in university admissions in the wake of its decision to end half a century of legalised abortion nationwide. In January, the nation’s top court announced that it would review affirmative admission cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, […]
An Afghan lecturer and human rights activist has described being beaten daily by Taliban prison guards, amid mounting warnings about the prospects for academia in the country. Scholars teaching contentious subjects have expressed concern that they will be targeted since US forces’ hurried retreat in August 2021, but although fears of imprisonment and beatings are […]
Even as caste discrimination continues to plague Indian higher education, debate about the best way to tackle the issue in universities abroad — and even over its very existence — continues to polarise academia.
India’s caste system traditionally grouped people by four major castes based on their ancestry, with the lowest class, Dalits — formerly known […]
Filipino academics have called for the protection of historical rigour as they steel themselves for Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr’s assumption of the country’s presidency later this month. The electoral victory of Ferdinand Marcos’ son represents a dramatic turnaround for the family after its return from exile in the 1990s. The rule of Ferdinand Marcos between […]
Education is not always an unalloyed good. Over the past few decades, East Asia has seen a stunning rise in the incidence of myopia, aka short-sightedness. And a growing pile of evidence suggests that the main underlying reason for this is education — specifically, the fact that children spend large parts of the day in […]
Nepal’s emergence as Australia’s biggest source of offshore students has fanned fears that the visa programme has been subverted into an “unsponsored work permits” scheme.
Immigration expert Abul Rizvi says ballooning numbers of successful student visa applications from the Himalayan nation suggest that lax rules may be luring migrant workers Down Under on study pretexts.
This could […]
Several UK universities are raising their headline postgraduate fees by 10 percent or more next year, suggests an analysis of the latest course data for 2022-23. By benchmarking data on individual courses collected from institutional websites, The Knowledge Partnership (TKP) suggests that ten institutions will raise tuition fees by 10, with many more increasing fees […]
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears its fourth month, much of the focus remains on fighting and survival. When can we talk about the reconstruction of Ukrainian higher education? “Now, I think, because we have to understand that reconstruction will be taking place in stages,” says Inna Sovsun, professor at the Kyiv School of Economics […]
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 […]
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