Breaking News
EUROPE-UNITED STATES
Brendan O’Malley
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has called on US-based scientists whose work is under threat from President Donald Trump’s executive orders slashing science and undermining research freedoms to relocate to Europe and has unveiled a package of incentives.
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
UNITED KINGDOM
Nic Mitchell
NORWAY
Jan Petter Myklebust
GLOBAL
Nathan M Greenfield
UNITED STATES
Karen MacGregor
GLOBAL
Nathan M Greenfield
FINLAND
Jan Petter Myklebust
DENMARK
Jan Petter Myklebust
Top Stories
EUROPE
LERU warns of raid to pay for defence-related technologies
Nic Mitchell
A leader of a key European university research stakeholder group has sounded the alarm at plans by the European Commission to abandon the exclusive civilian focus of the Horizon Europe framework programme for research and innovation to include defence and dual-use activities.
HONG KONG
Yojana Sharma
AFGHANISTAN
Manija Mirzaie and Shadi Khan Saif
SOUTH AFRICA-GLOBAL
Desmond Thompson
News
CHINA
Amber Wang
China’s annual catalogue of approved undergraduate majors in universities and colleges, routinely updated last week by the Ministry of Education, for the first time included programmes fast-tracked for approval amid new economic stresses unleashed by United States President Donald Trump’s trade and tariff policies.
THAILAND
Wasinee Pabuprapap
NORWAY
Jan Petter Myklebust
UNITED STATES-PORTUGAL
Andreia Nogueira
SWEDEN
Jan Petter Myklebust
Academics in Sweden have welcomed a government investigation aimed at strengthening academic freedom but argue the probe fails to take account of threats to academic freedom from the political establishment itself – threats that call for academic freedom to be enshrined in the constitution.
CANADA
Nathan M Greenfield
Six First Nations chiefs have criticised a claim made in court papers by four University of British Columbia professors and a former graduate student that the university’s acknowledgement that its campuses are located on ‘unceded’ Indigenous territory violates their academic freedom.
UNITED KINGDOM
Nic Mitchell
Amid ongoing talks of a youth mobility deal with the European Union, a new report highlights the sharp fall in UK students going abroad for study or work placements post-Brexit and after the pandemic – but shows progress in widening participation among less advantaged student groups.
NIGERIA
Abdulwaheed Sofiullahi
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
Edtech, AI and Higher Education
GLOBAL
Patrick Blessinger, Abhilasha Singh and James Brown
We have to embrace the new concepts represented by AI-powered teaching and learning while remaining committed to those core values that make education the driving engine of progress: advancing inquiry, expanding knowledge, fostering creativity and enhancing the quality of life for all.
Featured HE Jobs
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Academic Affairs Division
World Blog
CHINA-UNITED KINGDOM
Anan Chen
Sino-UK joint universities claim to provide students with invaluable intercultural skills that boost their employability, but research suggests that students in some joint programmes do not make lasting connections with international students, thus missing the opportunity to develop solid cross-cultural communication skills.
Features
SOUTH AFRICA
Mark Paterson and Thierry M Luescher
African universities are caught in a colonial and neoliberal trap that they must escape in order to provide “authentic learning” – even though this will likely take decades, says Fikile Vilakazi, the director of the gender equity unit at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
SDGs
MOROCCO
Wagdy Sawahel
Morocco has unveiled plans to establish an institute dedicated to promoting AI research and its practical applications across various developmental sectors. The Jazari Institute, the third AI-focused centre in the country, aims to transform knowledge into technological solutions for sustainable development.
GLOBAL
Daniella Tilbury
To achieve a level of sustainability that goes beyond window dressing requires that universities stop reflecting societal change and instead help drive it. We need higher education institutions to move from being ‘mirrors’ to ‘lighthouses’, illuminating new pathways, inspiring action and leading by example.
UNITED KINGDOM
Dorothy Lepkowska
New pathways need to be developed for young people to stem the increasing number of young people who leave school in the United Kingdom unprepared for further and higher education or for entering the workforce, the head of the government’s opportunities mission said.
Careers
MIDDLE EAST
Hashem Alshurafat, Waed Ensour, Hadeel Al Maaitah and Radwan Kharabsheh
A study of motivations for and challenges to pursuing an academic career in three Middle East countries showed that although the main factors are similar to those found in the general research literature, some factors are linked to Arab culture and legal systems.
Top Stories from Last Week
GLOBAL
Patrick Blessinger
Innovation has become a buzzword in education, but not all innovation leads to progress. Edtech tools that promise personalisation but end up exacerbating digital divides are a reminder that novelty alone isn’t enough. The innovation that matters most is guided by enduring educational values.
UNITED STATES
Philip G Altbach, Hans de Wit and Chris R Glass
GLOBAL
Rebecka Lettevall, Annika Olsson and Andrea Petö
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
UNITED STATES
Nathan M Greenfield
In what higher education leaders consider an existential moment, the American Association of Colleges and Universities has issued an extraordinary statement slamming President Donald Trump’s administration for ‘unprecedented overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education’ and calling for ‘constructive engagement’.
INDONESIA
Kafil Yamin
Indonesia’s former president Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, has returned to his hometown in Solo, Central Java, to live as an ordinary citizen but now faces two lawsuits, one of which – the authenticity of his tertiary education diploma – challenges the legality of his past presidency.