Breaking News
UNITED STATES
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Nathan M Greenfield
The Massachusetts state government recently joined other states in the country that have scrapped the requirement that its employees possess a degree for middle-skills jobs – part of a skills-based hiring movement that is likely to have implications for universities facing a demographic cliff.
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NORWAY
Jan Petter Myklebust
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Top Stories
EUROPE
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They seek to fill the space with ideological warfare
Jo-Anne Dillabough and Andrea Peto
A new wave of well-funded universities is being founded on the virtue platforms of the global ultra-right which seek to capture the space of the university as an institutional form but fill it with ideological warfare, serving as an attack on liberal perspectives.
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NORTH AMERICA
Nathan M Greenfield
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NORTH AFRICA-MIDDLE EAST
Wagdy Sawahel
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UNITED STATES-GLOBAL
Mira Sucharov
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News
PAKISTAN
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Ameen Amjad Khan
The Gilgit-Baltistan Civil Court in Pakistan has issued an arrest warrant for Muhammad Khalid Khurshid Khan, the region’s former chief minister, for his continued absence in the fake degree case in which he was disqualified for, and removed from, the position of chief minister last July.
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PAKISTAN
Ameen Amjad Khan
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AFGHANISTAN
Manija Mirzaie
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EUROPE-SINGAPORE
Yojana Sharma
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CAMEROON-CANADA
Elias Ngalame
A scuffle ensued and blows were exchanged when thousands of university graduates in Cameroon swamped the University of Buea campus to apply for the French language proficiency test, Test de Connaissance du Français or TCF, a requirement to obtain a Canadian visa.
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IRAN
Shafigeh Shirazi and Yojana Sharma
Female students in Iran are reporting feelings of fear and apprehension when entering university campuses after the regime in Tehran began a new crackdown to enforce the wearing of the hijab or head covering, reportedly deploying more than 32 agencies to enforce it.
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NIGERIA
Abdulrasheed Hammad
Incidents in which lecturers beat students have been captured on video at various universities in Nigeria. Work pressure and economic hardship may contribute to their behaviour, but they may also need workplace training and should be sanctioned for such actions, experts suggested.
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Special Report: AI and Research
GLOBAL
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Research that uses generative AI is expanding rapidly across fields, and is said to be accelerating and transforming scientific knowledge. University World News is publishing a weekly series of articles on AI and Research exploring the multiplying ways in which AI is involved in higher education research. The series will culminate in a special briefing in June.
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SOUTH AFRICA
Karen MacGregor
Astronomers, says Professor Mattia Vaccari, “found themselves in the unenviable position of moving from a relatively small data problem to a very big data problem – perhaps in the fastest way ever experienced by a science domain”. AI tools will be crucial in handling an impending tsunami of astronomy data.
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SOUTH AFRICA
Desmond Thompson
Two decades ago, South Africa had relatively few astronomers with PhDs, most of them white males. Today, it has hundreds, including many who are black and-or female. Are there lessons to be learned by countries looking to develop skills for rapidly advancing fields related to data and artificial intelligence?
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AFRICA-EUROPE
Desmond Thompson
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World Blog
UNITED KINGDOM-EUROPE
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Anne Corbett
The United Kingdom’s rejection of the European Union’s youth mobility plan in favour of bilateral discussions with old allies on the continent may be intended to showcase the UK’s status as a powerful sovereign state, but it leaves the education policy sector on the sidelines.
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SDGs
GLOBAL
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Nita Temmerman
Even though we are all too aware of how important effective communication and information-sharing are, for whatever reason there are still too many examples around of higher education institutions or sections within those institutions that are not observing an information-sharing culture.
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SOUTH AFRICA
Eve Ruwoko
Extreme climate events such as floods and heatwaves continue to pose significant challenges to economies and communities worldwide, and universities, as centres of knowledge production, play a crucial role in developing long-term solutions for mitigation. North-West University in South Africa is one of them.
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MADAGASCAR
The official inauguration of the University of Fénérive-Est in Madagascar has taken place. It is the first of several new regional public universities being built to reduce Madagascar’s deficit of student places. The university, which is already operating, is located in the north-east region of Analanjirofo.
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Features
SOUTH AFRICA
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Edwin Naidu
As 30 years of democracy commemorations continue before South Africans go to the polls again on 29 May, the head of the Council on Higher Education, Dr Whitfield Green, says the country’s tertiary education sector has undergone “massive surgery” from apartheid to a system serving all citizens.
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Top Stories from Last Week
UNITED KINGDOM
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Nic Mitchell
More than 50 British universities have confirmed academic job losses as a volatile market for international student recruitment and stalled income growth from home students force higher education bosses to scrap or slim down less popular programmes, with arts and humanities bearing the brunt.
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UNITED STATES
Jamil Salmi
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GLOBAL
Richard Holmes
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PHILIPPINES-CHINA
Elvira Ramirez-Cohn
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FRANCE-AFRICA
Maina Waruru
African students constituted nearly half of all foreign students in France in 2023, well ahead of those from the more mobile and populous European and Asian countries, including India and China.
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AFRICA-EUROPE
Desmond Thompson
The European Union has signed programme funding of €245 million (US$263 million) for various educational projects in Africa, including academic mobility across the continent, an Africa-Europe Youth Academy, vocational education and training in Africa, research and learning in Nigeria, and girls’ education in Zambia.
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GLOBAL
Libing Wang and Tianchong Wang
The growing integration of AI tools is catalysing a new era of ‘human-AI collaboration’ in research, signalling a profound shift in how academics approach their scholarly work. This shift is not just about increasing productivity and scale – it represents a fundamental change in the research paradigm.
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AFRICA
Elias Ngalame
African leaders, scientists and academic experts are looking forward to building a more prosperous, just and sustainable future with increased investments and knowledge in science, technology and innovation on the continent. This emerged at the Sixth African Science, Technology and Innovation Forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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Sponsored Article
International Science Council staff
With a record number of scientists displaced around the world, how can institutions offer better support during crisis and conflict? The International Science Council’s Centre for Science Futures pointed to Iraq and Ukraine as examples of why science institutions need to rethink support mechanisms for scientists.
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Sponsored Article
UAE University staff
A study by researchers from the United Arab Emirates University embarked on a ground-breaking exploration of machine learning techniques to revolutionise rainfall prediction in hyper-arid environments like the United Arab Emirates.
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Sponsored Article
Jessica Silwick
The fast-changing developments in artificial intelligence, a field that is dominated by men, are threatening to disrupt many economic and professional sectors worldwide. ABET has developed comprehensive guidance which it hopes will boost the role women play in STEM education and professions, including in AI.
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Sponsored Article
University of the Free State staff
The University of the Free State in South Africa has excelled over recent years as a research-led, student-centred and regionally engaged university that contributes to development and social justice through the production of globally competitive graduates and knowledge.
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Sponsored Article
The Education Collaborative staff
The Education Collaborative, an initiative started by Ashesi University in Ghana in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, is one of Africa’s biggest platforms of higher education stakeholders. Since 2017, the Collaborative has led a new model for collaboration in African higher education that is helping to grow the strength of the ecosystem.
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The assessment practices of universities teaching in English tend to be underpinned by a standardised notion of the language. But ignoring the global reality – and plurality – of the English language is impractical, when thousands of overseas students will bring their Englishes with them.
While funding higher degrees in arts and humanities must continue, we cannot rely on intrinsic value or the public purse to justify the expenditure. We have to show that arts and humanities PhDs can be as valid as those in engineering or life science.