Why are students rising up around the world and is there a common thread?

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. We launch the first in a global series of Special Reports on student movements and issues, aimed at deepening understanding and debate on what is transpiring across the student world. This week there are articles on student activism in Chile, Japan and India. Also, Rachel Brooks looks at what is driving the rise in student protest movements and why some are successful, and Nico Cloete investigates the vexing question of what proportions governments, business and individuals should contribute to higher education, and finds a ‘trilemma of trade-offs’.
On a similar theme, in our World Blog David Palfreyman says the funding of mass higher education is under-researched by academics but existing studies suggest that neither a free model nor one entirely funded by students is fair.
Going Global, the British Council’s flagship higher education conference, was held from 3-5 May in South Africa, with University World News as a media partner. Karen MacGregor reports on a British Council study which found that 75% of the more than 200 universities surveyed globally are involved with at least one social enterprise. And Munyaradzi Makoni says recent case studies from Ukraine, Morocco and Bahrain have highlighted the capacity of quality assurance in higher education to support nation-building in various ways.
And in our series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Marybeth Gasman suggests that widening participation requires that faculty take on innovative and challenging teaching methods to engage an increasingly diverse student population and the student-centred approach of Minority-Serving Institutions in the US provides a useful role model. Read more...