New importance for HE systems in the evolving global knowledge society

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In World Blog this week, Patrick Blessinger says higher education systems are undergoing a revolution as a result of globalisation, democratisation and lifelong learning as a human right, and have taken on new significance in the global knowledge society.
In Commentary, Petr Safronov contends that a top-down approach pushing internationalisation is limiting the autonomy of Russian universities, while controversies around internationalisation reflect the clash of opposing strategic visions among academics. Emma Sabzalieva relates a sorry tale from Kazakhstan of what happens when international student recruitment goes awry and students are left with broken promises. Mark de Vos advises that a key to retaining high-profile international researchers is often to take their partner’s career into consideration, as a growing number of European universities are doing.
In Features, Zachariah Mushawatu describes how the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe has placed students at risk, with no grants or loans, exploitation amid an accommodation crisis, and female students being vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
The annual conference of the Centre for Global Higher Education, held on 1 March in London, is covered in a Special Report. The director of the centre, Simon Marginson, said in his opening speech that while the recent negative positioning of higher education and research in both the UK and the US due to political changes was a wake-up call, higher education has transformative capacity and can ‘cut the ground from under the alt-right’. Nic Mitchell reports on a presentation indicating that the large research-intensive universities in the UK are most at risk of having their links with industry impaired by Brexit. And Jenni Case asks how one can maintain a sense of legitimacy for public higher education in South Africa in the face of such radical social challenges as the university protests of the last two years. Read more...