By Max Bearak. For decades, India’s institutes of technology and management, the famed I.I.T.’s and I.I.M.’s, have been seen as the pinnacle of this country’s higher education, offering world-class courses and above all, employability to its graduates. Yet a group of successful professionals and entrepreneurs, some of them alumni of these universities, have come together to establish an alternative to what they say is an educational paradigm that overly emphasizes technical capabilities while neglecting vital skills like critical thinking, communications and teamwork. More...

By Kane Fulton. Can scale up to a whopping 8.8 Terabits of capacity. A new version of the high speed JANET network has been launched to support higher education and research institutions. JANET6 can scale up to 8.8 Terabits of capacity using 100-Gigabit Ethernet. Its network architecture was in development for three years and its maker, the government-funded JANET organisation, expects that its fibre infrastructure backbone will last for at least 10 years. More...

By Dick Ahlstrom. Teachers’ unions open campaign to defend third level bodies in their research.
Irish universities are turning into profit-making institutions rather than serving their proper purpose as a public good. The change could destroy the higher education sector, university staff have warned. 
A ‘Defend the University’ campaign was launched today by two unions who represent lecturers, the Irish Federation of University Teachers and Siptu. They say they have the initial support of at least 700 lecturers and academics across all seven Irish universities with more moving to support the call. 
The campaign also launched a 10-point charter aimed at preventing the universities from becoming a research backup for the private sector. Their concerns arose because of current Government policy which argues that State investment in research should deliver a return, in the case of university principally from useful products, services and medical treatments. More...

By Geoff Maslen. More women are enrolling at university than before, and outnumber men from bachelor degrees to the top doctoral peaks. 
Girls outperform and outstay boys in school and, as a result, they go on to university in ever greater numbers. According to new statistics from the federal Education Department, the number of female students in higher education jumped by 33.5 per cent between 2002 and 2012, compared with a 22 per cent rise for males. In 2002, of the 151,550 Australian students who graduated from university, 56 per cent were women. By 2012, graduation numbers had increased to nearly 195,000, of whom 60 per cent were female, a ratio likely to be higher again this year. Read more...

By Joel Fensch. As presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet prepares for a second round of voting on December 15 in Chile, for what would be a second term in office, her campaign has released a proposal to provide universal access to higher education at no cost to students. Her campaign’s five-member special unit’s proposal not only requires broadly increasing the country’s welfare state, it also calls for the elimination of for-profit universities, which currently play an important role in the country’s education system. The team is proposing new taxes on “professionals,” to cover the cost of providing free access to universities. More...