How do universities balance global and local demands for engagement?

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In a Special Report this week, University World News covers the Global University Network for Innovation’s sixth Higher Education in the World report. Brendan O'Malley interviews the lead editor Francesc Xavier Grau about the report’s focus on whether prevailing pressures mitigate against universities being both locally competitive and addressing global challenges. Andrew Petter puts forward a convincing argument for why universities should embark on an ambitious campaign of community engagement rather than concern themselves with rising in university rankings. And Barbara Lethem Ibrahim suggests a global civic engagement project for universities, to serve the goal of raising up all higher education around the world, including in places of repression or conflict.
   A second Special Report covers last week’s International Higher Education Forum organised by Universities UK. Nic Mitchell reports on the Institute of International Education president’s call for universities to continue to have the capacity to make their own foreign policies, which is necessary in these ‘tumultuous times’. Nic Mitchell also reports that the under-secretary in the UK Department for International Trade focused his presentation on the growth of transnational education as a key strategy for Britain post-Brexit, while Yojana Sharma says the British Council’s Matt Durnin called for British universities to be part of a broader research collaboration with China which matches China’s ambitions and economic aims.
   In World Blog, Marion Lloyd says steps taken by the Mexican government to ease the repatriation of migrants – particularly students, for whom university application processes are being streamlined – should be welcomed, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s threat to deport millions of illegal immigrants.
   In Features, Jan Petter Myklebust tells of some of the interesting predictions of the trends in global higher education in 2040 made by Bert Van der Zwaan in his new book.
   The 2017 Worldviews Lecture on Media and Higher Education, for which University World News is a media partner, will be presented on 5 April by Peter Scott. It is entitled “Populism and the Academy: On the ‘wrong side’ of history”.
   Another event for which you are invited to register is the upcoming free webinar on “International Student Mobility Trends: Shifting recruitment priorities and strategies”, to be held on 12 April, hosted by University World News in partnership with DrEducation and StudyPortals. More...