By Brian Kamanzi. South Africa’s student movement focussed around calls for the removal of a statue of the imperialist megalomaniac and renowned ‘philanthropist’, Cecil John Rhodes, from the University of Cape Town. Read more...

By Njoki Wamai. Just over a year ago a protest movement against a Cecil John Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town in South Africa called for the statue’s removal as its presence on campus was perceived as symbolising a lack of transformation from apartheid and colonialism. Read more...

By Calum Mitchell. Since the global financial crisis eight years ago, students, academics and professional economists come have come together to form the international network Rethinking Economics, which has been calling for a better economics education in response to a discipline unfit for purpose. Read more...

By Olena Rusnak. Ukraine has a long history of student movements. Since the 19th century students have organised themselves for the purpose of struggling for their rights and needs. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. Two years after the May 2014 military coup, Thailand’s student movement has shrunk to a few dozen activists amid a clampdown by the ruling junta on campus activities. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley. Universities New Zealand has welcomed the government’s budget announcement last week that it is investing NZ$761 million (US$513 million) in an Innovative New Zealand package in areas including science, skills and tertiary education, amid rosy projections for economic growth fuelled by population increases. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley. The top five performing national higher education systems are the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden, according to the Universitas 21 annual ranking for 2016. But the country with the most improved performance is China, up four places to 30th due to continual rise in output rankings. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In Commentary, Pushkar urges the Indian government to crack down on the many unscrupulous universities which leave students with high debt and useless degrees. David Stremba and Scott Spragg advise on ways US universities can be pro-active in addressing the prospect of dwindling numbers of Chinese students. And Yegor Stadny discusses a new performance-based funding model for Ukrainian universities, and says Ukraine needs to start creating the data systems required to implement a new funding system.
In our series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Margaret Andrews looks at the innovative approaches many business schools have developed in their attempts to teach students leadership.
We publish the last of a three-part Special Report on Student Activism and Issues. Yojana Sharma overviews the rise of student movements in Asia, which have notched up considerable achievements but need to garner societal support to survive, and she also reports on student groups in Thailand that are struggling for democracy in the face of oppression.
Among others, there is also a set of articles on reforming or ‘decolonising’ the curriculum – by Calum Mitchell in the United Kingdom, Kenyan postgraduate student Njoki Wamai and Brian Kamanzi in South Africa.
Lastly, in Features, Rebecca Warden reports on discussions at the Third Arab-Euro Conference on Higher Education in Spain on what opportunities universities in Europe and the Middle East are offering Syrian refugees and on what should be done to streamline efforts. Read more...