A fight over a tree between students from two higher education institutions that share premises resulted in 13 serious casualties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More...

By Tunde Fatunde. The Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities or AVCNU has proposed reforms to deal with the increasing number of individuals being promoted to professorships without apparently following due process. More...

By Stephen Coan. “You have to have chutzpah” to be a professional in the field of HIV-AIDS, quips Linda-Gail Bekker, a professor of medicine at the University of Cape Town and chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. Bekker is about to become the first female president from Africa of the International AIDS Society or IAS. More...

By Wagdy Sawahel. Higher education in Comoros continues to struggle under growing student demand, high graduate unemployment, poor infrastructure, brain drain and inadequate levels of teaching, learning and research, according to experts. But support is on the way, with plans for branch campuses of two foreign universities. More...

By Karen MacGregor – Africa Editor. In Africa Analysis, Tom P Abeles maintains that student unrest in the United States and South Africa reflects deep problems with their education systems that academics and students ought to tackle together, and Jenny J Lee describes how the hit-or-miss enactment of immigration policies by South Africa is wreaking havoc among international students.
In Africa Features, we interview the executive director of the European Association for International Education Leonard Engel about issues confronting international education, ahead of the Global Conference on Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa next month. And Wachira Kigotho unpacks an African Development Bank report that accuses Egypt’s universities of exacerbating youth unemployment by failing to equip graduates with the skills to fill 600,000 private sector vacancies.
In World Blog, Hans de Wit contends that growing divides between world-class and other universities are tempting many institutions in directions of corruption and unethical behaviour.
In Commentary, among other articles Angel Calderon welcomes the new Times Higher Education Latin America university rankings, but writes that there is room for improvement and some omissions. Cristina González and Liliana Pedraja argue that Hillary Clinton’s plans for free tuition for some students and Chile’s bid to roll back privatisation represent the reassertion of higher education as a public good. And Robert Coelen and Jiang Bo outline the breathtaking scale of higher education internationalisation in China, and its key lines of development. Read more...