By Datuk Ahmad Ibrahim Bajunid. Public and private institutions of higher learning work hard to be relevant by linking with community and industry. To this end a network of concepts is formulated and a language and conceptual register common to higher education institutions is developed.
Within the register, higher education institutions map out their strategic plans, typically connected to the plans and blueprints of education at school and higher education levels as well as to the broader national development plans. More...

By Noah Smith. Here is the good news: Japan’s national universities are not, in fact, getting rid of social sciences and humanities. Earlier last year, it looked as if Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology told public schools to cease education in these areas. When I spoke to ministry officials this past fall in Tokyo, they were eager to clarify that this wasn’t what they had ordered. They blamed misinterpretation by the Japanese press and mistranslation by the Western press for the misunderstanding. More...

By Evie Andreou. The rector of the University of Cyprus Constantinos Christofides called over the weekend for a comprehensive overhaul of the state education system which excluded any say from the unions.
In an open letter published in Phileleftheros on Sunday, focusing on the poor results by Cypriot students at the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) between 2009 and 2012, Christofides criticised the educational reforms the government announced earlier last year.
The report was compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and was first released in December 2013. It has been called the biggest-ever education league table so far. More...

By Study International Staff. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has instructed union secretaries to ensure sufficient measures are employed to boost India’s best universities into the world’s top 100 rankings. 
At a meeting held on New Year’s Eve, Modi expressed his desire to utilise new, technological platforms to keep tabs on student/teacher attendance within Indian schools, and discussed various plans to improve the region’s educational infrastructure and equipment. More...

By Study International Staff. Last month’s OBHE conference has found that digital tools and the provision of effective online learning can massively boost the reputation of an institution on both a national and international level.
The OBHE, or the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, is a higher education ‘think tank’ with institutional members across 30 different countries. At a December conference held at Regent’s University London, experts from the board discussed matters of online learning in a session called The New Landscape of Higher Education, which examined the influence of technology, partnerships, pathways and other education innovations upon the higher education sector. More...

By Jack Grove. Six universities in talks on global credit transfer system for online.
Universities are set to pilot a global credit transfer system that will allow students to use courses taken online to count towards their degrees. More...