By Grace Karram. Canada’s education news is currently being dominated by the protests of Ontario public school teachers amid fiscal cuts. But this has not stopped some determined post-secondary researchers from releasing reports on recent study findings. Not surprisingly the bulk of the reports suggest how institutions should spend limited financial resources during austere times. It seems that as money becomes scarce, post-secondary education advice is infused with investment metaphors: Should institutions invest in high-performing students, permanent instructors or high-enrolment programmes? This is problematic, as it presents a false sense that education funding is a zero-sum game in which administrators must finance the most lucrative venture. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor. The Southern African Regional Universities Association has completed its first phase, with funding ended and most of its staff gone. But there remains a need to drive regional higher education collaboration, according to Dr John Butler-Adam: “What happens next will require new approaches, nuanced strategising and strong implementation skills.”
“This might seem a great deal to expect,” he wrote in a review of the association, published last month and titled The Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA): Seven years of regional higher education advancement 2006-2012.
“The process has, however, achieved so much thus far that the gains simply cannot be lost. They must be turned into regional higher education systems that will change the lives of the region’s people at a rate not previously imagined.”
Butler-Adam, a geography professor who is currently editor-in-chief of The South African Journal of Science and a consultant to the University of Pretoria, was commissioned by SARUA to review its operations and achievements and their significance for Southern Africa. The origins of SARUA date back to a general conference of the Association of African Universities held in Cape Town in February 2005. Read more...

By David Jobbins. British prime minister David Cameron has intervened to help a business management graduate, who has devised an automated application system for educational agents and international students, to approach the UK Border Agency (UKBA) at the right level. Dawood Fard (25) came up with the idea for the system, Centurus One, during a business management masters course at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). While on a business experience placement working in Delhi, he witnessed the bureaucratic process that international students face when applying to study in the UK.
“The day after I came back from India I got about 20 people together and we thrashed out ideas,” Fard said. “The current process is tedious, slow, inflexible and expensive. We have developed a revolutionary system that is easy to use, transparent and not at all intimidating. Read more...