Breaking News
CHINA-UNITED STATES
Amber Wang
The latest restrictions on international student visas by the US government are upending the plans of thousands of prospective Chinese students, while students currently in the US are being warned that leaving the country, even briefly, could jeopardise their chances of returning.
MALAYSIA-GLOBAL
Yojana Sharma
CHINA-UNITED STATES
Denis Simon
NEW ZEALAND
John Gerritsen
EUROPE-UNITED KINGDOM
Fabrizio Trifiro
SWEDEN
Jan Petter Myklebust
AFRICA-GLOBAL
Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis
Top Stories
UNITED STATES-GLOBAL
Defending autonomy is fundamental to HE
Fernando M Reimers
The Trump administration’s attempt to bar international students from Harvard is an act of political reprisal that strikes at the heart of the university’s global mission. Global engagement is not an ancillary value or an administrative preference – it is the engine of innovation and understanding.
GLOBAL
Futao Huang, Wen Wen and Qian Xiao
PALESTINE
Mona Jebril
AFRICA
Desmond Thompson
Trump vs Harvard and HE
GLOBAL
Riyad A Shahjahan and Simon Marginson
The United States government’s ban on Harvard University enrolling foreign students exemplifies the growing control states are asserting over global academic mobility. Amid global tensions and rising nationalism, rather than defending international higher education, we must reimagine it as a commitment to shared futures.
UNITED STATES
James Yoonil Auh
The attack on Harvard’s ability to enrol international students is a bellwether case; a moment when the world’s most powerful university was made to kneel because of what it represents: porous borders, shared knowledge, and cosmopolitan belonging. What happens now will echo across institutions everywhere.
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
Latest figures from Studyportals, the world’s largest study choice platform, show that the Trump administration’s continued attacks on major universities – and Harvard University in particular – have driven interest in studying in the United States down to levels comparable to those seen during COVID-19.
UNITED STATES
Mary Beth Marklein
ASIA-UNITED STATES
Yojana Sharma
UNITED STATES
Julio Labraña and Paulina Latorre
The latest developments in the Donald Trump versus Harvard University saga show that university autonomy has always been limited by political and systemic forces. The challenge now is to redefine what ‘internationalisation’ means in ways that recognise intercultural knowledge and epistemic justice.
UNITED STATES
Santiago Castiello-Gutiérrez
To practise academic hospitality in 2025 means refusing to let government policies and physical borders dictate who belongs at a university. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, technology can be leveraged to create visa-independent pathways for international scholars and students.
News
INDIA
Shuriah Niazi
India continues to welcome some of the world’s most prestigious universities to its shores, with the country’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan revealing this week that the number of foreign universities set to establish campuses in India this academic year now stands at 15.
GLOBAL
Dorothy Lepkowska
Better data-gathering within and between countries is needed to inform student access and participation strategies in universities, a conference has heard. This should encompass an individual’s early life experiences because “these issues are something that cannot be solved by higher education policy-makers alone”.
GLOBAL
Scovian Lillian
A significant leadership gap persists across higher education institutions worldwide despite decades of progress in expanding access to education for women and girls, a UNESCO report has revealed. While women dominate as students and faculty, they remain largely absent from senior leadership positions.
CAMEROON
Elias Ngalame
The higher education community in Yaoundé, Cameroon, took advantage of the rare public appearance of 92-year-old President Paul Biya to call for dialogue to end years of crisis in the North-west and South-west English-speaking regions of the country, which have made studying in these regions perilous.
Featured HE Jobs
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
Edtech, AI and Higher Education
GLOBAL
Yating Huang, Sihui Li and Zihan Liu
A recent study in a postgraduate academic setting in China supports the notion of a transformed university environment where the integration of generative artificial intelligence with supervisors’ academic expertise actually helps to create a more enriching and humanised research experience for postgraduate students.
World Blog
GLOBAL
Martin Bean
Without change, many higher education institutions risk becoming less relevant in an evolving landscape. Two powerful strategies hold the potential to help: modular learning and AI-driven personalisation. Together, they can open up access, improve learner outcomes, enhance efficiencies and create future-ready education systems.
Features
GLOBAL
Nic Mitchell
The need for diversification of international student markets has never been greater as government visa restrictions and unrealistic university targets for growth cause headaches for the world’s major recruiting countries, according to some of the big guns of global higher education.
AFRICA
Eve Ruwoko
Universities should rethink how they lead, teach, research and serve communities, and learning institutions should move beyond institutional silos and national boundaries to embrace a regional identity that is united by purpose and empowered by institutional leadership.
AFRICA
Maina Waruru
Young people across Africa are eager for educational opportunities that flow from the internationalisation of education and want to benefit from the same exposure as that enjoyed by their international counterparts outside the continent. But, say experts, Africa lacks a coherent continental plan.
SDGs
GLOBAL
Wagdy Sawahel
A systematic literature review of journal articles about the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings may have detected a self-selection reporting bias on the part of participating universities and countries, which demonstrates the potential use of the ranking as a means of greenwashing.
GLOBAL
Julia Ayuso
Sustainability cannot depend solely on individual enthusiasm – it needs a systemic approach, institutional structures, dedicated resources and a coherent narrative that connects the SDGs with the university’s mission. Real impact comes when sustainability is no longer a parallel agenda but embedded in the institution’s DNA.
ASIA-GLOBAL
Kalinga Seneviratne
The professor who coined the term ‘blue carbon’ has been awarded the 2025 Japan Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious international awards in science and technology, second only to the Nobel Prize, for his groundbreaking contributions to marine and coastal ecology research.
Top Stories from Last Week
UNITED STATES
Brendan O’Malley
The Trump administration on Thursday revoked Harvard University’s right to enrol international students and the US Secretary of Homeland Security told the university that existing students would have to transfer. But on Friday Harvard sued and a judge temporarily blocked implementation of the ban.
CHINA-UNITED STATES
Yojana Sharma
GLOBAL
James Yoonil Auh
EUROPE
Jo Ritzen
UNITED KINGDOM-EUROPE
Nic Mitchell
The United Kingdom and the European Union have agreed to cooperate further on creating a ‘balanced youth experience scheme’, to use the preferred diplomatic language. But whether this will involve the UK opting to rejoin the EU’s Erasmus+ mobility programme remains unclear for the time being.
UNITED STATES
James Yoonil Auh
The current challenges facing Harvard University in its confrontation with the Trump administration in the United States are not confined to admissions policy – they interrogate the very conditions under which universities can continue to function as autonomous spaces of ethical inquiry and global engagement.
SWEDEN
Jan Petter Myklebust
CHINA-GLOBAL
Amber Wang and Yojana Sharma