By Karen MacGregor. As many as 148 people – most of them Christian students – were killed on Thursday after militants stormed a university in northeast Kenya, in one of the country’s worst Islamist attacks. Several other universities had warned of terror threats and stepped up security in the week before the attack.
Addressing survivors of the massacre on Friday, Education Cabinet Secretary Jacob Kaimenyi announced indefinite closure of Garissa University College, after consultation with the university senate. Surviving students would be transferred to Moi University. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor – Africa Editor. An attack by Islamist militants on a university in Kenya left 148 people dead, mostly students. The horrific assault in which Muslim students were reportedly spared and Christian students murdered made headlines across the world and highlighted the vulnerability of educational institutions.
Conflict of a less violent nature continued in South Africa, where student protests to have a statue of British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes removed from the University of Cape Town spread to other campuses. We publish three very different takes on the issue in the Debates section, where University of Cape Town academic Xolela Mangcu worries that the protests could be an early warning of a racial war, William Saunderson-Meyer describes the student efforts as an “urge to rewrite history – a profoundly totalitarian act”, while Zenobia Ismail believes the protests are about how South Africa comes to terms with its colonial past and how universities can contribute to nation building.
In Commentary, Jenny J Lee and Chika Sehoole describe how South Africa has become a regional hub of higher education for students from across Africa. Further afield, Agnete Vabø and Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen look at how different approaches to fees for foreign students in Nordic countries might impact on recruitment and internationalisation.
Juan Hu and Jiali Qin raise questions about who wields power over academic matters in China’s universities – the government, administrators or academics? – and Jo Ritzen writes that protests at the University of Amsterdam are evidence of a failure to communicate change properly. Read more...

Comment has been invited on the Draft Declaration and Action Plan of the 1st African Higher Education Summit on Revitalising Higher Education for Africa’s Future. As a media partner to the summit, University World News urges people working or interested in African higher education to respond. Read more...

By Wachira Kigotho. Delegates attending the African Higher Education Summit held in Dakar, Senegal, agreed to promote harmonisation of the continent’s higher education systems through accreditation and mutual recognition of degrees, diplomas and certificates. Read more...

By Wachira Kigotho. Delegates at the first African Higher Education Summit in Dakar failed to agree on governance models that could be adopted by African universities in the post-2015 era. Although in the last two decades laws have been passed granting limited autonomy to public universities, many people observed that governments are still calling the shots. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor. “There will be no more important issue in the world – not energy, not oil, not water – than that of talent,” says Professor Phillip Clay, former chancellor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, and a board member of the MasterCard Foundation. “The places that develop talent, motivate talent and use talent will be the places that move forward in the world.” This must be young Africa’s priority. Read more...

By Damtew Teferra. At the recently concluded African Higher Education Summit in Dakar, the chair of the African Union Commission Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Senegalese President Macky Sall pledged to undertake a role of critical importance – to lobby their constituencies in support of revitalising higher education at an upcoming heads of state meeting in June 2015. Read more...

By John Kirkland OBE. One delegate at the African Higher Education Summit in Dakar warned that, unless higher education was given equal priority to that of the primary and secondary sectors, African education would be like a “pyramid without a roof”. What a wonderful analogy. Read more...