By Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach. The 2015 annual conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators took place in Boston, USA, on 24-29 May. A record number of over 11,000 participants demonstrated the increasing importance of international education, not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world since the number of international participants from over 100 countries was also at a record high. Read more...

By Ard Jongsma. African university leaders overwhelmingly agree that forging ahead with the internationalisation of higher education is a matter of urgency. At the 2015 Conference of Rectors, Vice Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities in Kigali, Rwanda, they even seemed to be approaching a sound level of agreement on how to get there. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In our World Blog, Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach call for balance in the battle between increasing commercialisation and national self-interest evident in international education on the one hand and the ideals of internationalisation on the other.
In this week’s Commentary, Alina Cordova writes from experience about the positive prospects for internationalisation of smaller campuses with limited resources, with an emphasis on producing global students adaptable to any environment.
Stella-Maris Orim addresses the implications of the casual approach of Nigerian students and academics to plagiarism based on evidence from a doctoral research project, particularly for Nigerian students wanting to study abroad. And Pamela Tate describes a model which improves lives through better employment linked to better education and recognition of prior learning, which she believes can be replicated worldwide.
In Features, Yojana Sharma reports on China’s launch of a new international alliance of universities ostensibly to provide research and engineering support for China’s mammoth ‘One Belt, One Road’ project along the ancient Silk Road route.
Munyaradzi Makoni reports that the MasterCard Foundation will provide US$25 million in funding to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, mostly to support disadvantaged students.
In a second Special Report on the British Council’s Going Global conference for international education leaders held in London, Yojana Sharma examines how the world’s largest higher education systems by student enrolments have struggled to address the challenges of quality and equity. And Brendan O’Malley reports on support for a global fund for higher education to enable alternative provision to be made during times of war and other disasters. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. Internationalisation of higher education, the proliferation of branch campuses, joint degrees and international research collaborations can mean navigating an academic, social and cultural minefield and making compromises. Universities could be taking a great risk and could end up compromising on important academic values such as academic freedom. Read more...