Nivedita Ghose had never imagined that studying to battle diseases could place her in the theatre of operations where the tensest geopolitical conflict between Russia and the US since the end of the Cold War is unfolding.
Since Friday, the student at Ukraine’s Crimea State Medical University in Simferopol has put aside her textbooks, keeping track of the frenzied evacuation plans at the varsity as Russian troops occupy the city.
“As a medical student, you’re not scared of blood,” Ghose said today over phone. “But when you go abroad to study, you don’t imagine that you’ll get caught up in a war-like situation. This is a lot scarier than surgery.”
Nearly 700 Indian medical students at the Crimea State Medical University are caught in the heartland of the conflict over Ukraine. Over 5,000 Indian medical students are enrolled at multiple Ukrainian universities in Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa and Lugansk, apart from Simferopol – attracted by even lower fees than offered by Chinese medical schools. More...

Going Global delivers a global forum for world leaders of international education to debate the role the international arena plays in global tertiary education policy. Going Global International Educational conferences attract more than 1,000 leaders of international education from over 80 countries across the globe. See more...

This blog, written by Philippa Lysaght with the Institute for Economics and Peace, is about a new report on the international costs of global violence. It is part of the Wikiprogress series on Peace.
The international cost of violence containment has surpassed the combined GDPs of Germany and Japan.
The Economic Cost of Violence Containment, the latest report from the Institute for Economics and Peace, calculates the cost of violence in over 150 countries according to 13 types of violence related spending.
The research shows that violence containment, which is understood as any economic activity related to the prevention or consequences of violence, has a global economic impact of US$9.56 trillion.
To put this in perspective, violence containment is equal to US$1,300 for every person on the planet every year and is almost double the size of the world’s agriculture industry.
Violence containment spending is over 2.4 times the size of the total GDP of Africa. More...

The fourth policy brief in the UIL series recommends youth engagement in multipurpose community learning spaces and centres. The aim is to improve their access to full participation in learning and community development activities. It is based on discussions from the International Policy Forum on Literacy and Life Skills Education for Vulnerable Youth through Community Learning Centres held on 20 – 22 August 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Policy Brief 4 is built on the second policy brief published by UIL, Youth Matters: Equipping Vulnerable Young People with Literacy and Life Skills. More...

We are very pleased to inform you that the website of the Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) is now online. We invite you to visit it at http://learningcities.uil.unesco.org/home.
Our goal in launching the GNLC website is to provide an online platform connecting all stakeholders involved in promoting lifelong learning and building learning cities in the international community. More...

By Susana Mas. Rob Norris, Saskatchewan's minister of advanced learning, will be part of delegation. Employment Minister Jason Kenney is taking a Canadian delegation on a study tour of Germany and the U.K. this week to learn from their respective education and skills training systems, a model he has touted as "enormously successful" and one Canada could learn from. Germany's dual system of vocational education and training, where students learn a trade for a few years and then go on to obtain a university degree, is said to be one of the major factors in the country's economic success. More...

By Robert Zaretsky. In 1854 the young Russian officer Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was stationed in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. For several weeks French and British forces had laid siege to the city. An aspiring writer and inspired Russian patriot, Tolstoy transformed his observations into the Sevastopol Sketches, three long dispatches that won him the regard not just of critics but also of Czar Alexander II, who was desperately seeking a way out of the war that his just-deceased father, Nicholas I, had recklessly begun. More...

By Holly Else. Several UK universities have seen the number of Indian students plummet by more than 50 per cent in recent years. The figures came to light during a series of evidence sessions for the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, which is investigating the effects of immigration controls on international student numbers in STEM subjects. More...