For more than 50 years, admissions officers at some of America’s swankiest universities have given a leg up to black, Hispanic and Native American students whose achievements in secondary school might not, on their own, have won them a place. On June 29, the Supreme Court declared this […]
After 13 years of Conservative government, the country’s public services are in less than fine fettle. There is an exception. Under the Conservatives, England’s schools have improved. England is now the best in the West when it comes to reading at primary-school age, according to one ranking. When it comes to maths, English students of […]
Scholars have expressed hope that Nigeria’s introduction of tuition fees and student loans will end the underfunding of its universities. One of the first acts in office of new president Bola Tinubu in June was to sign into law a student loan bill, seven years after it was first introduced to the country’s parliament.
A for-profit billed as Germany’s largest university, majority owned by a private equity firm, has bought a London banking education provider with UK degree-awarding powers as well as a Canadian university, as it expands an online model that features an AI “teaching and learning assistant”.
The sale of the London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF) […]
Vietnamese children: “one of the world’s best schooling systems”
Ho Chi Minh, the founding-father of Vietnam, was clear about the route to development. “For the sake of ten years’ benefit, we must plant trees. For the sake of a hundred years’ benefit, we must cultivate the people,” was a statement he liked to repeat. […]
Norwegian universities have a busy summer ahead as politicians argue over the finer details of international student fees, which will be charged to those from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) from this month.
Overall support for the plans from the Norwegian parliament’s education committee on June 6 confirms the late summer deadline, despite warnings from […]
Hong Kong’s government has begun consulting universities about lifting its cap on international students, potentially bringing thousands more to the island in coming years, according to senior university officials. Legislators are looking to relax the official 20 percent limit on “non-local” undergraduate students — roughly half of whom come […]
The looming closure of dozens of insolvent universities in South Korea will change the distribution of students across the country, potentially furthering inequalities between its regions and capital city, say scholars. Korea’s rapid demographic decline has already resulted in university closures countrywide — and it is expected to get […]
The moment when his chemistry master pulled out a pistol, declared it loaded and waved it in the air was “probably”, says Justin Webb, a broadcaster, the worst point of his boarding-school career. Winston Churchill would recall the floggings, done until pupils “bled freely” and screamed loudly. George Orwell […]
In a first, Taiwan’s ministry of education has approved a so-called merger between a public and private institution — a policy initiative that scholars say could be a useful model for other universities also on the brink of closure.
In late May, the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST), a public institution, got the […]
Teheran’s past policies of allowing Iran’s higher education sector to “blindly develop” to absorb students facing a tough jobs market have exacerbated current high rates of graduate unemployment. According to figures recently released by the Statistical Center of Iran, roughly one million university graduates in the country are […]
Simulated model of Berkeley’s new data science college
The University of California at Berkeley is starting a new college of computer and data science, in what it expects might become a nationwide model for coping with the field’s surging and often unmet demand. UC Berkeley, like many US campuses, has been overpowered by the […]
UK government departments have been asked to set out their position on student visa reforms. The Home Office is pressing for restrictions, with opposition to post-study work limitations said to be coming from an array of departments including the Treasury.
The Times reports that Indian origin Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has proposed reducing the time […]
“Good job you!” shouts Pauline Bika, as a group of schoolchildren completes the hokey-cokey. “Good job me!” choruses her class. Bika runs a small government primary school in Edo state, in southern Nigeria. It is reached by a mud track that starts not far outside Benin city, the state capital. Her school has 140 pupils, […]
The majority of Afghanistan’s private universities face imminent closure, with their incomes having plunged following the Taliban’s decision to ban women from higher education. The country’s union of private universities said in December that the ban could force 35 out of 140 institutions with 70,000 female students on their rolls, to shutter doors. But academics […]
China has abruptly withdrawn its Covid-era endorsement of remotely delivered tertiary education. This order is likely to galvanise international enrolments in Western countries while straining university admissions services, visa processing and flight and housing availability.
Beijing authorities have reversed a 2020 rule change that allowed for the local accreditation of degrees and higher education diplomas taught […]
American public universities are fighting new attempts to allow guns on campuses, with conservative state lawmakers undeterred by research data and clear opposition from institutional leaders.
The most recent instance involves West Virginia, where the state senate voted 29-4 in favour of legislation to let people bring firearms on to college and university campuses, despite opposition […]
Last year’s sale of the non-profit online course platform edX has left both parties short on value, with buyer 2U still hunting for paying customers, and vendors Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) still mulling how the proceeds will boost remote teaching.
Scientists at the two universities created edX in 2012 as a […]
When an enormous explosion rocked central Beirut in August 2020, it wasn’t just the estate of Lebanon’s oldest university that was badly damaged. The blast — which was caused by vast amounts of ammonium nitrate dangerously stored in Beirut’s port and killed 215 people — was also a huge blow to staff morale and the […]
London-based universities and post-92 institutions would be hit hardest if a crackdown on UK international student visas goes ahead. UK is more reliant on international student revenue now than it was the last time there were serious threats to overseas recruitment, during the prime ministership of Theresa May (2016-19). In 2020-21, tuition fees from non-European […]
When the president of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) began posting photos of his daily life to social media in November, it was a gut reaction. A day earlier, Russian air strikes had hit Ukraine’s power grid, plunging the city into darkness. “I didn’t have a plan — I realised we had no heating […]
Boosting housing stocks could be Australian governments’ “biggest” contribution to alleviating ‘student poverty,’ a widely reported phenomenon Down Under. Eileen Baldry, deputy vice chancellor of UNSW Sydney, says that if government quarantines social housing for students, it would help them weather an accommodation squeeze and cost-of-living crisis.
Students could face weekly rents of A$200 (Rs.11,400) instead […]
The Chinese government has ordered universities in the east of the country not to use talent funding to poach academics from the nation’s mid-west and north east, which is causing an internal brain drain. The ministries of education and finance sought to offer some encouragement to university autonomy in funding management in a notice, but […]
In making one of the biggest professional and symbolic breakthroughs in all of US higher education — becoming the first black female president of Harvard University — Claudine Gay is getting some predictable help on identifying what comes next.
Dr. (Prof.) Gay, to be clear, brings top academic credentials to the job. She earned an undergraduate […]
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.
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.
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 […]
Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya (SKV) has been honoured with the prestigious Madhya Pradesh Annual Environmental Award 2025. The award was conferred by chief minister Dr. Mohan .....Read More
At least 19 people have been killed and more than 100 injured after a Bangladesh Air Force F-7 BGI training aircraft crashed into Milestone College .....Read More
