Iain Watt
Visa delays and refusals are playing havoc with Australian universities’ course and financial planning, weeks ahead of the new semester starting July/August.
Median visa processing time frames for higher education students have more than tripled in the past few months, according to the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Fifty percent of applicants […]
Canada seems to be losing the attention of international students so quickly that its institutions might not recruit enough students this year to hit the sharply lower visa caps imposed recently by the Trudeau administration.
After watching overseas student enrolments surge to more than 400,000, the federal government this year announced the imposition of study visa […]
Nusantara: controversial new capital city
As Jakarta (pop.10.6 million) rapidly sinks into the ocean — 40 percent of the greater metropolitan area of the country’s admin capital (pop.30 million) is now below sea level — Indonesia’s behind-schedule, controversy-ridden new capital city on the jungle-clad island of Borneo could spell a new era for […]
Vin Group’s VinUni, Hanoi campus
The route to Sunway University is far from your typical campus approach. To reach this Malaysian institution, you must first navigate to Sunway City on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, past various Sunway hotels and Sunway shopping malls, away from the Sunway medical centre, until you reach the […]
Ideally, Marianne Korkalainen’s high school in Rautavaara, a tiny town in eastern Finland, would enrol at least 20 new pupils each year. This autumn, her shrinking municipality will send her only about 12. But Ms Korkalainen, the head teacher, has a plan: she intends to invite half a dozen youngsters from poorer countries to help […]
With cannons on campus, its own Qing-dynasty wall and the first Dutch fort in Taiwan nearby, National Cheng Kung University seems an appealing place for a budding historian. However, after a first round of applications, no students had accepted places in the history department for next year. It is a shock for the university, […]
President Claudia Pardo (left): academic background
A climate scientist has become the first female leader of Mexico after winning a record-breaking majority on the back of promises to transform the country into a “scientific and innovation power”. But questions remain over how far she will break from the populist policies of her predecessor.
Claudia […]
(Dr. Larry Arnn is President, Hillsdale College, USA. [email protected])
As in India and much of the world, politics has been turbulent in America for years. Perhaps it is worse here. President Trump has been impeached twice by our House of Representatives, but both times acquitted by the Senate. After all that, he is still front runner […]
(Dr. Larry Arnn is President, Hillsdale College, USA. [email protected])
Do you ever watch dog trials? I find them fascinating. Dogs herd sheep, run over obstacles, catch frisbees, and seek by scent and sight. They exhaust themselves in these contests. They do it joyfully. It is a fulfillment of their nature.
Students too face numerous trials. The most […]
US middle school children: heated debates
“It’s like they don’t trust us,” says Eva King, a 14-year-old pupil at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, DC. Deal’s administration has banned mobile phones during the entire school day. Pupils must store their devices inside Yondr pouches — grey padded cases that supposedly can be […]
Bombed Al-Azhar University, Gaza: perceived Hamas ties
Two hundred days into the invasion of Gaza by Israel, not a single university is left standing. At least 95 university professors and 5,000 students are reported to have been killed, while more than 500,000 children have been out of school for over seven months.
“Everything was […]
Sari Multala
Education leaders have described Finnish government plans to charge full-cost tuition fees to students from outside the European Union as “paradoxical”, as the country hopes to significantly increase its international student intake.
At present, Helsinki subsidises the higher education of students from outside the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA), although […]
Students writing gaokao: punishingly difficult
On June 7, millions of young people wrote the world’s largest academic test. China’s university-entrance exam, known as the gaokao, is punishingly difficult. Students spend endless hours cramming for it. But it is also widely accepted as meritocratic. Work hard, score well and, no matter what your social […]
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA
America is beset with bureaucracy. Several million people work in public education and most of them aren’t teachers. The effect of charter laws is to decentralise the management of schools, a major advantage
In my last Letter from America (March), I wrote that Hillsdale College is sponsoring over 100 “charter […]
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA – [email protected]
In America as in India, the academic year has ended for most colleges/universities, and students have dispersed for the summer. Those who just graduated will be coming back to visit, but never again to live and study on campus. For them, this is a time of joy […]
Students protest at Columbia University
The perceived fairness of punishments handed to student protest leaders will be crucial for whether US universities can heal after police were invited to break up pro-Palestine sit-ins, according to a former college president.
Many staff and students have condemned leaders’ decisions to invite police to campus, notably at Columbia […]
Prof. Randy Boyagoda
“You can point to brawling in the streets of Paris in the 13th century over rivalling theology professors, you can point to town-and-gown brawls in England in the 16th century, never mind the 1968 generation’s anti-war protests…”
To Randy Boyagoda, the University of Toronto’s new adviser on civil discourse, campuses have always […]
UK universities are staging a last-ditch battle to resist further changes in the rules governing international students, and stave off more financial damage to the sector, ahead of the release of a keenly anticipated report into the graduate visa route.
With the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) set to conclude its investigation into “abuses” in post-study rights […]
President Yoon Suk-yeol: resounding defeat
On the face of it, the plan by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk-yeol to increase the number of doctors being trained at the country’s medical schools sounded like a winning way to get the public onside ahead of a parliamentary election.
In reality, by joining the long line of politicians […]
Legislation enabling private universities to operate in Greece will deliver “significantly positive results” and limit the flow of Greek students to overseas institutions, says the country’s education minister.
Kyriakos Pierrakakis told Times Higher Education that the education law, which was passed in March amid mass student protests, would facilitate the “opening up of the Greek university […]
Chinese graduates: Industry-academy mismatch
The unemployment rate for youth aged 16-24 in cities reached a record high of 21.3 percent last June (2023). That was perhaps too embarrassing for the government, so it stopped publishing the data series while it rejigged its calculation to exclude young people seeking jobs while studying. The new numbers […]
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA
Students in elite institutions are highly privileged. Why do they not spend this precious time, while they are young and full of energy, learning about the world instead of fomenting riots to change it?
Many of the most prestigious American universities have become dysfunctional during the past month. They have […]
Blade Nzimande: kickbacks allegation
Ahead of the start of the academic year in February, South African higher education is mired in crisis, amid claims of corruption and questions over the ability of the country’s student funding scheme to manage payments. Higher education minister Blade Nzimande has been on the ropes for weeks following publication […]
China’s move to take more direct control of university governance is likely to presage a further crackdown on academic freedom, experts warn. University presidents have long complained of a lack of autonomy stemming from the influence of government-appointed party secretaries on campuses, but these parallel governance structures are now being merged in institutions across the […]
Al Israa University under fire: intentional plan?
Israel has been accused of deliberately targeting universities and academics in Gaza as part of a strategy branded “educide”. Following the controlled demolition of Al-Israa University, Israeli army footage of which was widely shared on social media, every single higher education institution in Gaza is believed to […]
President Lula: wage increases & scholarships
High-profile “exiled” academics have returned to Brazil after a “change in atmosphere” in the year since Jair Bolsonaro lost the presidency. But the polarised country could now face strikes as higher education continues to suffer from years of underfunding.
Hampered by a hostile legislature and spending restrictions, Luiz Inacio […]
Coronavirus has taken the sheen from Australian universities’ golden goose, with discounting, offshoring and other factors slashing the per-student value of international education at many institutions.
A Times Higher Education analysis shows that while overseas enrolments took a battering from Covid-19, so did, tuition fees. Compared with 2019, per-student earnings for almost half the sector are […]
Macke Raymond
A year ago, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, proposed to adjust a state cap on charter schools, publicly funded but privately run schools that have become a locus of innovation and controversy in American education. Ms Hochul’s plan was not ambitious, but it would have allowed dozens of new charter […]
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA
Hillsdale College, where I am employed, sponsors over 100 schools across the United States. These are ‘classical’ schools — they look back to a ‘classic’ age for direction and inspiration.
One feature of classical schools is they aim to build ‘character’. It is a big word. It emanates from an […]
Dr Larry Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, USA
As I wrote in my last despatch, at Hillsdale College, we are working to become involved with education in India. We are excited by this prospect because we love to teach, because India is important, and because there are profound commonalities between our countries.
As I wrote last time, India […]
Quebec premier François Legault: language chauvinism revival
McGill University, one of Canada’s top-ranked higher education institutions, is warning that a provincial policy to discourage English-language instruction through sharp tuition fee hikes is threatening its existence.
The move by Quebec premier François Legault “puts the university’s very future in question”, McGill said in issuing an estimate […]
Foreign students in Korea: more than welcome
Foreigners are among the more than 4,000 who make up Yonsei University’s 39,000-strong student body, their presence attesting to the fact that Yonsei’s name, hallowed in Korea, carries weight far outside the country, too. Known as one of the troika of the nation’s top “SKY universities” (alongside […]
Rapid expansion of postgraduate enrolment is forcing Chinese universities to abandon their “boarding school” model of providing on-campus accommodation for all students.
Institutions have long provided subsidised dormitories, which cost significantly less than private off-campus options. At Fudan University, for example, on-campus accommodation costs Master’s students between 800 yuan (Rs.9,600) and 1,600 yuan annually, while a […]
President Macron (right) & PM Borne: second thoughts
France’s newly passed hard-line immigration law will repel international students and stifle French research, warn education leaders. The controversial new legislation approved by the French parliament in December, divided President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party, while the far-right, anti-immigration politician Marine Le Pen, leader of National […]
By surrendering to a political mob despite the apparent protection of the world’s most powerful university, Claudine Gay has set a precedent that has left academics wondering who can possibly survive the rising ideological crusades of America.
On January 2, Prof. Gay stepped down as president of Harvard University after six months of stifling pressure from […]
Insufficient German language skills are the primary hurdle for international academics targeting long-term careers in Germany, a new study has found. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) interviewed international postdocs, new professors and members of university management for the study, concluding that while research funding opportunities and early career promotions attract academics to Germany, international […]
Facing their toughest-ever nationwide tests of academic freedom, some US institutions are slowly trying to move past questions of intrusive donors and violent protests by teaching more directly about tolerance.
While many of the nation’s campuses remain convulsed by demonstrations, threats, and arrests relating to the Israel-Hamas conflict, several of them — including Harvard University, […]
Chinese students in Australia: reducing numbers
The first international student from China, enrolled at the University of Sydney a century ago. Now its sandstone buildings hum with foreign languages: almost half the university’s students are from overseas. “For Asian kids, we value the rankings a lot,” says one of its Chinese students, who asks […]
Cambridge University is facing new legal and internal challenges to its policy of forcing academics to retire at the age of 67. Around 120 current and former professors at the institution have signed a letter to the recently installed vice chancellor, Deborah Prentice, urging her to call a vote on abolishing the Employer Justified Retirement […]
President Javier Milei: education and research slashing targets
In the wake of his shock election victory in December, a video of new Argentinian president Javier Milei tearing the names of government departments off a whiteboard went viral on TikTok.
It shows the right-winger — sporting a distinctive pair of huge sideburns — shouting “afuera” (get […]
