24 août 2018

As Israeli students are finishing their final exams, Palestinian students in the occupied territories don’t know whether their institutions will be opening for the coming academic year or if their lecturers will continue to teach, as dozens of lecturers with European and American citizenship are being expelled, writes Daphna Golan for Haaretz.
Around half the foreign lecturers at Palestinian universities started receiving letters last November saying their requests to have their residency visas extended had been refused because they have been “living in the area for more than five years”.
In addition, the foreign spouses of these lecturers are being asked to sign declarations that they do not intend to work. To ensure that they keep this promise, they are asked to pay guarantees of between ILS20,000 (US$5,500) and ILS80,000 (US$22,000), which will be forfeited if it is discovered that they had been working despite the ban. More...

As a microcosm of Venezuela’s economic woes, university professor Jose Ibarra shared his financial predicament on social media – his tweet claiming that it would take four months of his salary to afford to fix his shoes, write Cristina Abellan Matamoros, Natalia Oelsner and Marta Rodriguez for Euronews. More...

Iranian Space Agency Director Morteza Barari said that three Iranian universities are jointly working on manufacturing a CubeSat. He stressed the important roles that universities can play in the development of the space industry in the country at a meeting in Tehran last week to discuss the cooperation between Iranian universities and the space industry, reports Mehr News Agency. More...

Some colleges and universities are in trouble with the Fee Regulatory Committee headed by Justice DV Shylendra Kumar, which has issued notices to 15 deemed universities and private universities in Karnataka state for allegedly breaching the fee structure set by the committee, reports Bangalore Mirror. More...

Universities in the United Kingdom are artificially inflating their grades to look good, a report by think tank Reform claims. The report states that universities, competing with each other, have altered the way grades are calculated to increase the number of firsts, writes Will Frampton for Bournemouth Daily Echo. More...

Analysts had thought that a stand-off between universities in Germany and Sweden and online publisher RELX, which, among other things, publishes academic journals, could hit revenues but that proved not to be the case in the publisher’s half-year results, reports Proactive Investors. More...

The Zambia National Students Union, an umbrella body for all student unions in Zambia, has called on the minister of higher education, Professor Nkandu Luo, to ensure that the ministry intensifies inspection of all universities and colleges to ensure competent lecturers are employed and adequate facilities are provided, reports Lusaka Times. More...

Canadian universities have traditionally enjoyed high levels of autonomy from government relative to their counterparts in other parts of the world, but the decision-making authority of universities appears to be shrinking and that’s cause for concern, writes Julia Eastman for University Affairs. More...

For young people right now, there is little cause for optimism but new data from the University of California shows that a quality public education might still serve as one of the country’s most important equalisers, with many of the lowest-income graduates of the University of California system going on to earn more than their parents, writes Eillie Anzilotti for Fast Company. More...