By Brennan Weiss. Benbella Akuffo Asare, a 24-year-old university graduate, has been looking for work as a teacher for over a year. He says he has applied for more than 500 jobs since graduating from the University of Education, Winneba in Ghana and finishing his mandatory one year of national service in 2015. Read more...

By Brendan O'Malley. Ameenah Gurib, the first elected woman President of Mauritius, which is ranked Africa’s third most developed country, is a champion of higher education and research in Africa and was listed in the world’s top 100 most powerful women by Forbes earlier this year. Read more...

The government announced last week that it is planning to close several higher learning institutions after a preliminary inspection report indicated that some are below standard, writes Louis Kolumbia for The Citizen. Read more...

By Sharon Dell – Acting Africa Editor. In our lead story, Brennan Weiss discusses the issue of graduate unemployment in Ghana and the prominent position it has assumed in the build-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held this coming week.
In Africa Analysis, Damtew Teferra says it is important to view the potential disengagement of the United States in Africa following Donald Trump’s election as US president in the context of the growing interest in Africa from other corners of the world, including Germany’s mooted African ‘Marshall Plan’.
In a series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Brendan O’Malley interviews the first elected woman President of Mauritius, Ameenah Gurib, who says there has to be a transformation within the African higher education landscape so that universities start to become producers of knowledge that addresses the fundamentals of Africa’s problems.
In Africa Features, Tunde Fatunde highlights debates around the recent licensing of eight new private universities in Nigeria; while Munyaradzi Makoni reports on a recent webinar which explored some of the reasons for the continent’s relatively slow progress in harmonising quality assurance and accreditation processes.
In Global Commentary, Ming Cheng asks Western universities to examine whether international students are indeed gaining the desired international experience at their institutions, based on a case study of Chinese masters students at a British and Australian university; Sarah O’Shea proposes ways that universities in Australia might retain and engage first generation students and particularly those from aboriginal backgrounds; and Emily Johnson shares the views of students across the world arising from an essay contest on the ideal higher education model for their country. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In a series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Brendan O’Malley interviews the first elected woman President of Mauritius, Ameenah Gurib, who says there has to be a transformation within the African higher education landscape so that universities start to become producers of knowledge that addresses the fundamentals of Africa’s problems. In Commentary on Africa, Damtew Teferra says it is important to view the potential disengagement of the United States in Africa following Donald Trump’s election as US president in the context of the growing interest in Africa from other corners of the world, including Germany’s mooted African ‘Marshall Plan’.
In other Commentaries, Ming Cheng asks Western universities to examine whether international students are indeed gaining the desired international experience at their institutions, based on a case study of Chinese masters students at a British and Australian university; Sarah O’Shea proposes ways that universities in Australia might retain and engage first generation students and particularly those from aboriginal backgrounds; and Emily Johnson shares the views of students across the world arising from an essay contest on the ideal higher education model for their country.
In World Blog, Grace Karram Stephenson says we need to see inclusivity and academic freedom as complementary forces that allow every voice on campus to be heard and protected from harassment.
Lastly, in Features, Arther Mirza reports on a plea by Nadia Murad – a woman who was held captive by Islamic State and personally witnessed the horror of genocide – to students and the youth to counter ideologies of hate and help end terrorism. And María Elena Hurtado reports on an international seminar in Chile that explored how universities should face the challenge of a rapidly changing world in which millions of jobs will be displaced by technology. Read more...

A blogger has called on the education minister in Burundi to restructure the higher education system and require universities to respect the academic calendar. Read more...

By Damtew Teferra. The research has just been published in Studies in Higher Education as a special issue themed “Early Career Academics in Africa: Policies and experiences in the teaching praxis”. The articles examine the experiences of induction of early career academics in a number of African universities. Read more...

By Maina Waruru. The graduation last month of 26 inaugural masters students from the Pan African University’s Institute of Water and Energy Sciences in Algeria marked another milestone in the actualisation of the African Union-backed institution – and built on successful graduations at the university’s institutes in Kenya, Cameroon and Nigeria. Read more...