Breaking News
GLOBAL
Wagdy Sawahel
The emergence of ‘predatory’ websites mimicking the official Webometrics Ranking of World Universities and leading to the spread of fraudulent data across official university reports in 29 countries raises concerns about a systemic crisis in academic ethics, according to a recent study.
CHINA-UNITED STATES
Denis Simon
NORWAY
Jan Petter Myklebust
Top Stories
GERMANY
Deep concern over shift away from development goals
Michael Gardner and Brendan O’Malley
Drastic budget cuts announced by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development will seriously affect the country’s international academic links and threaten a key pillar of Germany’s foreign science policy and development cooperation, the German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD, has warned.
CHINA
Amber Wang
EUROPE
Sjur Bergan and John Lawrence Dennis
AFRICA
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
News
NEPAL
Binod Ghimire
In a major crackdown against education consultancies allegedly defrauding students aspiring to pursue higher studies abroad, Nepal police on 15 May raided 95 such operators and arrested 69 people in Kathmandu Valley, an area in central Nepal that includes the capital city.
EUROPE
Brendan O’Malley
AUSTRALIA
Shadi Khan Saif
GLOBAL
Jan Petter Myklebust
A newly published open access book on university governance explores the increasingly complex challenges in governing and managing contemporary universities and demonstrates how institutions can best respond to changing social, economic and political dynamics to ensure their efficient operation and continued growth.
SWEDEN
Jan Petter Myklebust
Academics have welcomed the approval by the Swedish parliament of new rules governing the entry and presence of foreign researchers, doctoral students and other students in the country, due to come into effect on 11 June. They improve opportunities to gain residence permits.
INDIA
Shuriah Niazi
Academics involved in a study tracking the use by a traditional tribe in Assam of medicinal plants with potential pharmaceutical value say scientific validation must be ethical, with indigenous communities receiving recognition, intellectual property protection and economic benefits from any commercial use.
Webinar
GLOBAL
University World News is hosting a webinar on 25 June on one of the major global challenges facing universities today: how to engage with the millions of potential students from low-income and other backgrounds that make higher education participation less likely.
Edtech, AI and Higher Education
GLOBAL
Min Bahadur Bista
Graduation ceremonies reveal the emotional condition of societies. They expose the moral assumptions institutions expect young people to celebrate publicly. When graduates reject those assumptions in one of the most symbolically important rituals of civic life, that rejection deserves our attention.
GLOBAL
Aslam Fataar
The AI experiences of a leading Southeast Asian university demonstrate that institutions need not choose between technological surrender and reactionary resistance. It is possible to build adaptive ecosystems that combine regulation with experimentation, ethical reflection with innovation, and institutional coordination with disciplinary flexibility.
GLOBAL
Robert Mason, Rikard Jalkebro and Ziad Hani
The future of academic integrity will depend less on identifying AI and more on understanding human learning and developing policies that cater to it. Higher education’s most effective response to artificial intelligence may ultimately be the oldest educational principle of all: know your students.
World Blog
MIDDLE EAST-UNITED KINGDOM
Michael Quinn
A project co-hosted by two universities is giving young Palestinian writers a platform to share their work and express their experiences in creative ways, ensuring the lived experiences of students whose lives have been irrevocably altered by conflict are heard around the world.
Features
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
How can international offices plan strategically amid shifting geopolitical tensions, changing visa regimes and changing student flows around the world? A new book published by NAFSA explores the complexities that have to be negotiated and the critical competencies required to achieve institutional success.
SDGs
GLOBAL
Anette Wu, Cecilia Brassett, Jan Lüdert and Alexander Preker
There has been little intentional effort to raise the awareness of science diplomacy among medical students, but their inclusion as stakeholders in science diplomacy is a promising approach to promoting global collaboration and reducing national isolationism in light of modern geopolitical conflicts.
ETHIOPIA
Wondwosen Tamrat
Top Stories from Last Week
UNITED KINGDOM
Geoffrey Williams
A new law prioritising locally educated medical graduates for eligibility for the UK Foundation Programme, the bridge to full medical council registration and access to National Health Service careers, upends the lives of 850 Malaysian students and threatens the ‘equivalence’ claim underpinning UK TNE.
CHINA-UNITED KINGDOM
Emma Prodromou
INDIA
Shuriah Niazi
GLOBAL
Borhene Chakroun, Vanja Gutovic and Mathias Bouckaert
CHINA
Amber Wang
China’s president has called for deeper international collaboration in basic science following a major funding boost that signals renewed emphasis on basic research as China seeks to strengthen what officials describe as ‘original innovation’ – a reference to breakthrough discoveries and pioneering technological advances.
EUROPE
Rebecka Lettevall, Annika Olsson and Andrea Peto
An exclusive focus on formal protections such as legal frameworks, policies or guidelines obscures the fact that academic freedom is not primarily threatened by the absence of rules but by institutional practices, labour relations and governance arrangements that systematically undermine scholarly autonomy.
GLOBAL
Wagdy Sawahel
While the decline of single-author publications is often attributed to greater scientific collaboration and research complexity, a new study highlights evidence that suggests that systemic publication pressures and metric-based evaluation systems have also created incentives for ‘strategic co-authorship’ practices that undermine research integrity.
UNITED KINGDOM
Brendan O’Malley
Parliament’s Education Committee has criticised the government for having no plan for universities facing insolvency and inadequate protection for students, as ‘unprecedented financial pressures’ mount on universities, risking severe consequences, including institutional closures and severe damage to the UK’s global academic reputation.