Government is not keen on allowing private universities on a full-blown scale‚ Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has said. Read more...

By Sharon Dell. Amid ongoing threats to shut down the sector, and in the absence of a long-term plan to fund higher education, vice-chancellors of South Africa's 26 public universities last week issued a public "call to action", imploring all South Africans to work with universities to ensure the successful completion of the academic year. Read more...

By Amasa P Ndofirepi and Michael Cross. In their pursuit of competitiveness, higher education institutions across Africa set themselves the target of becoming ‘world class’, and labels such as a ‘world-class African university’ are not uncommon in their mission statements. Read more...

By Gilbert Nakweya. The growth of higher education and its obligation to contribute towards sustainable development in some East African countries is hampered by a myriad challenges, with inadequate funding being one of the most significant. Read more...

By Kudzai Mashininga. The University of Zimbabwe, or UZ, has summoned three students to a disciplinary hearing after they held aloft protest placards during the university’s graduation ceremony last month at which Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was officiating. Read more...

By Kudzai Mashininga. The fund in question is the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund, or ZIMDEF, established through an act of parliament to fund human capital development. Read more...

By Sharon Dell – Acting Africa Editor. In Africa Analysis, Amasa P Ndofirepi and Michael Cross argue that African universities should aspire to the status of ‘flagship’ rather than ‘world-class’ universities, and Southern African Regional Universities Association CEO Piyushi Kotecha writes about the significance for harmonisation of a new regional masters curricula in climate change and development.
In Africa Features, Gilbert Nakweya highlights the way in which universities in Kenya and Uganda are struggling to meet their mandates in the context of funding shortfalls, while Sharon Dell outlines the implications for higher education of a recent national report on skills demand and supply in South Africa.
In a series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Sharon Dell reports from a meeting of the International Association of University Presidents on the importance of forging equal higher education partnerships to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the context of global inequalities.
In Global Commentary, Natalia Shmatko encourages Russian PhD holders to further develop international academic cooperation and in particular consider simultaneous mobility, where a researcher works for several organisations located in different countries at the same time and is based either in one of them or in the home country. And Anand Kulkarni writes that global university rankings and comparisons with China indicate that India needs to do more to spread excellence and become more internationally oriented in its higher education system. Read more...