How can universities turn the tide on the ebbing of public trust in higher education?

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In our series on Pacific Rim higher education and research, Michael Schill expresses his concern that trust in higher education is eroding in some countries, including America, and he examines the reasons and proposes actions to counter the trust deficit.
   In Commentary, Anne Corbett suggests looking at the bigger picture when judging Europe’s Bologna Process 20 years down the line and she highlights some of the positives that came out of the recent ministerial conference in Paris. Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington, April Koury and Helena Calle suggest that now is the time to rethink education and consider the options for preparing students and the workforce for an automated world that will require very different sets of skills. And Richard Holmes contends that the ranking of universities for teaching and learning is still very much unmapped territory despite attempts by ranking organisations to introduce teaching-oriented rankings, such as the latest THE Europe Teaching Rankings.
   In our World Blog, Ruwayshid Alruwaili writes that universities in Saudi Arabia are being called on to help move the country beyond its oil-based economy towards being more knowledge-based, and this requires a greater emphasis on university-industry links and research-related products.
   In Features, Wagdy Sawahel reports on a study on doctoral education in Sub-Saharan Africa that recommends an increase in the production rate of PhD graduates and in investment in doctoral education. Ararat Osipian writes that Russia’s Lomonosov Moscow State University has been dragged into a growing corruption scandal with its vice-dean of the law faculty, an expert on cybercrime and money laundering, detained on fraud allegations. And Munyaradzi Makoni reports on tributes paid by South African universities to the legacy of the late Nelson Mandela on Mandela Day on 18 May – the day that marked 100 years since the iconic statesman’s birth. More...