By Dennis Hayes. Freedom of speech is at the heart of academic life and a university should be a place where every issue is discussed and debated. Not so, according to the findings presented in the first ever Freedom of Speech University Rankings (FSUR). They reveal that 80% of UK higher education institutions routinely regulate and actively restrict students’ free speech and expression in some way. More...

By Michael Muskal. The education gap between rich and poor continues to grow, becoming a chasm of opportunity that often blocks the search for a better economic life, according to a report released Tuesday. More...

By Mark Miller. Harvard and Stanford have launched programs for high-level execs seeking to change careers. Other universities are looking to jump in.
Stanford University welcomed 25 unusual students onto its campus this month—all in their 50s and 60s.
They are the inaugural fellows of a new program, the Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI), designed for people who want to follow more than one career path in their lifetimes and who want to go back to a college setting for more training. It is the forefront of a new movement for universities to look beyond typical 19-year-old undergraduates. More...

By Greg Bensinger. In its latest effort to win new customers, Amazon.com Inc. is going back to school.
Amazon has struck deals with three large universities to operate co-branded websites selling textbooks, fan shirts, ramen noodles and most other items available on Amazon.com. While the deals aren’t exclusive, officials at the colleges say the arrangements acknowledge a reality: Their students already shop on Amazon. More...

Dozens of junior colleges (3-year training) have been upgraded into universities (4-5-year training), but the training quality has not matched the expansion.
A Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) report showed that Vietnam had 433 universities and junior colleges by June 2014, including 347 state-owned schools and 86 non-state owned.
According to Dr. Bui Anh Tuan from the ministry, 133 universities and junior colleges were upgraded from junior colleges and intermediate schools (two-year training), respectively, in 2007-2013. Of these, 59 schools were upgraded to junior colleges, and 49 to universities. More...

The Italian businessman behind plans to create Italy's first Islamic university told The Local he is pushing ahead with the project despite authorities in Lecce rejecting a request for a building permit, a decision that was partly due to the current negative focus on Islam and opposition from residents. More...

By Sonja Knutson and Valentyna Kushnarenko. The internationalisation of higher education in Ukraine continues to be vulnerable to the tensions of the region's geopolitics. Since Spring 2014, serious hostilities have arisen with Russia over eastern Ukraine.
Despite the distraction of war, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko last July signed a ‘Law on Higher Education’, significant because it is the first such law developed through consultation with the Ukrainian public. More...

By Diana Jane Beech. Anybody trying to make a career in research will be only too aware of the long-term obstacles that lie ahead of them. Continual assessment and subjection to scrutiny have become prerequisites for sustaining any research career, be it through mandatory research assessment exercises or necessary applications for new grants and sources of funding. More...

By Igor Chirikov. Russia has seen a tremendous growth in student enrolments since the 1990s. More than 70% of people aged 17-22 enter higher education, which has basically become a social imperative for the majority of young people.
By 2010 Russia had become the second largest higher education system in the world in terms of the number of students per 100,000 population. More...