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By Emilio Rodríguez-Ponce. I read with interest Cristina González’s perceptive article on higher education in Chile and the dislocations that the highly privatised system of higher education, established during the 1973-90 military government of Augusto Pinochet, has produced in the country – now one of the most economically unequal in Latin America in spite of its growing prosperity. Read more...

By Jeremy Rappleye. Last May, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe boldly declared that “within the next three years, eight national universities will hire 1,500 leading researchers from around the world”. Recruiting foreign faculty would be the first step in a prodigious push to place 10 Japanese universities among the world’s top 100 over the next decade. Read more...

By Robert Coelen. As educators, we need to be aware of the forces that shape the future of education and the world for which we prepare graduates. A major factor that will shape the global demand for higher education relates to the development of middle-class populations throughout the world. Read more...

By Jack Stripling, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Robert J Zimmer is a man of few peers. The University of Chicago president, who heads one of America’s wealthiest institutions and gets free housing in a major metropolis, earned almost US$3.4-million in 2011, making him the highest paid private university leader in the United States that year, a Chronicle analysis has found. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor. As tens of thousands of new graduates poured out of South Africa’s universities to hopefully enjoy the summer holidays, an important question for the country is whether they will find jobs next year and where they will go. A major graduate destination survey published earlier this year found that one in 10 is likely to end up abroad – “a significant loss”.
The study was conducted by the Cape Higher Education Consortium, or CHEC, a body set up by the four universities in Western Cape province to coordinate inter-institutional cooperation and academic programme collaboration. It published a report titled Pathways from University to Work. Read more...

By Kirk Perris. The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, in conjunction with the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, recently completed the delivery of its second MOOC entitled, “Mobiles for Development”, or M4D.
Co-led by Professor TV Prabhakar of IIT Kanpur and Dr V Balaji of the Commonwealth of Learning, or COL, the course was designed to provide learners with knowledge about the hardware of mobile devices and to engage in innovative uses for social development with these tools. The course ran over six weeks in October and November. Read more...

By Nic Mitchell. Higher education is still grappling with how to determine a successful outcome from the explosion of interest in massive open online courses – MOOCs – this month’s conference of The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education heard. One international higher education expert said the generic term MOOC was part of the problem. Read more...

By Nic Mitchell. Huge new markets for international students are opening up in Asia and the Middle East as parents search for affordable, quality higher education for their offspring and question the wisdom of sending them to Western universities for three of four years of study.
That is the view of Ashwin Assomull, a partner with Parthenon Group’s international education practice, who has worked with government ministers and foundations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and India. Read more...

By Nic Mitchell. The former education advisor to Tony Blair's Labour administration told an international higher education conference in London that higher prices for a university degree should not be seen as any guarantee that students were getting better quality education.
Sir Michael Barber, co-author of the far-reaching report An Avalanche is Coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead, was speaking at the opening of a conference on “The International Higher Education Revolution: Impacts on mobility, qualifications, networks”, staged in London by The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, or OBHE, from 11-12 December. Read more...

By Jan Petter Myklebust. A major investigation by Denmark’s high-level Productivity Commission has proposed an overhaul of higher education funding, the introduction of tuition fees for students, quality improvements and degrees of greater relevance to the labour market. Universities are prepared to constructively debate the recommendations but want a “more thorough analysis”. Read more...