Universities and employers should collaborate on alternative credentials

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In Commentary, Sean Gallagher says alternative credentialing experiments are increasingly blurring the boundaries between professional development, occupational credentialing and formal higher education and suggests higher education institutions and employers work together to more intentionally shape the development of the credentials market. Yossef Ben-Meir, Mouhssine Tadlaoui-Cherki and Kati Roumani say that a non-profit organisation in Morocco is demonstrating how providing young people with training that will help bring social justice to communities through grassroots development can play a role in preventing them from being recruited by terror organisations like ISIS. Bernhard Streitwieser and Simon Morris-Lange encourage Germany’s policy-makers and universities to lead the way in integrating young refugees and encouraging tolerance despite recent terror attacks which threaten to turn public opinion against migrants.
In World Blog, Nita Temmerman provides eight pointers which make for an effective academic board, which is fundamental to good academic governance.
In Features, Jan Petter Myklebust reports on a declaration by top early-stage researchers presented to European Union ministers calling for better conditions to attract young researchers.
The Association of Commonwealth Universities leaders’ conference 2016 was held in Ghana last month. In a Special Report Brennan Weiss outlines a call by former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan for universities to promote democracy, as growing inequality and intolerance threaten higher education globally. Tunde Fatunde reports on a ministerial panel that called for higher education to empower both women and men, and Brennan Weiss examines the introduction of venture creation programmes in higher education and the role of the entrepreneurial university. Read more...