By Rok Primozic. The beginning of a new academic year is the perfect moment to elaborate on what is waiting for students and student movements in higher education.
Nowadays, the European student movement has to fight to protect its leading principles and foundation – namely, that higher education is and should be considered a public good and a public responsibility. More...

By Patrick Stokes, The Conversation. And so now we officially know: philosophy is a waste. How can we be sure? Because Coalition spokesman for scrutiny of government waste Jamie Briggs has promised that a Tony Abbott government in Australia would get rid of “those ridiculous research grants that leave taxpayers scratching their heads wondering just what the government was thinking”.
Seriously, don’t bother with philosophy. Don’t bother trying to understand the rules of logic, or what constitutes a good argument, or what makes an action right or wrong. Don’t bother trying to follow humanity’s ‘great conversation’ let alone trying to contribute to it. Waste of time and money. More...

By Lucie Cerna and Meng-Hsuan Chou. Labour market shortages in high-skilled sectors, demographic changes and constant pressure to innovate have prompted governments around the world to engage in a global competition for talent. In this context, the regional factor has become increasingly important, as governments seek to activate all policy instruments in the race for the ‘best and brightest’.
This is certainly the case in Europe.
In the most recent calculations, the European Commission estimated that Europe would need between 384,000 and 700,000 workers in the information and communication technology sector by 2015, and one million healthcare professionals by 2020. Unsurprisingly, we saw the European Commission opening its July 2013 communication on “European higher education in the world” with the title “Europe and the Global Race for Talent”. This reference set up the scenario that, unless attractive measures are in place, Europe might lose out. In the light of the ongoing financial and economic crisis shaking the foundations of the European Union (EU), how is Europe faring in terms of being an attractive destination for foreign talent? More...

By Brendan Cantwell and Barrett J Taylor. Universities around the world increasingly compete with one another for resources. Within countries this competition occurs through funding mechanisms. Especially prominent is the international trend away from block grant funding to the competitive allocation of research funds.
Competition also occurs internationally as universities vie for the best research staff and students on what is approaching a worldwide basis. Such wide-scale competition can produce large gaps between winners and losers. More...

By Richard J Edelstein and John Aubrey Douglass. Despite the significant increase in the number and type of international activities – from branch campuses to MOOCs and aggressive international student recruitment – many institutional efforts appear to be launched without a clear idea of best practices or how specific activities might be productive and meaningful for a particular institution. Empirical knowledge of how and why institutions expand these activities, and whether they are successful, remains largely anecdotal.
Why do universities embark on new projects and activities that engage the institution outside of its national boundaries? What motivates individuals and their institutions to include transnational relations among their core strategic interests and concerns when considering the future path for success? Why are more foreign students and faculty recruited and why are curricula and research agendas more international and global in scope?
The motivation of institutions, and their leaders, appears to be multiple and complex. As part of our larger effort to generate a taxonomy of different kinds of international engagement by universities, and reflecting a recent research paper published as part of a larger project based at the University of California, Berkeley, we offer here an exploration of possible institutional logics and rationales used to justify what are sometimes significant financial and institutional commitments. More...

By Hans de Wit and Fiona Hunter. When the European Association for International Education, or EAIE, was founded in 1989 in Amsterdam, Europe was a different place in many ways.
Cold War thinking still dominated worldviews, the European Community had 12 member countries compared to the current 28 of the European Union, and the Euro had not yet been introduced as a common currency. Asian economies were beginning to emerge, but Asian countries were considered more Third World than New World and able to challenge Old Europe. More...

By Wachira Kigotho. The Ministry of Education in Kenya has directed universities to shut campuses and constituent colleges that are situated near rubbish dumps, quarries or factories.
Urging the Commission for University Education, or CUE, to enforce the order, Cabinet Education Secretary Professor Jacob Kaimenyi said the government had noted with concern that some campuses were located in environments that could be injurious to students. More...

Other findings include that transnational education, or TNE, is still not a policy priority for many countries. While incentives to attract foreign universities were helping to drive activity, there were questions around sustainability in their absence, and TNE – especially branch campuses – was not attracting foreign direct investment. Further, there was a need for sending and host countries to together define transnational education, and the importance of a national TNE framework and institutional-level policies in host countries “cannot be overstated”.
The Shape of Things to Come – The evolution of transnational education: data, definitions, opportunities and impacts analysis was published last Thursday as the second volume in a series. Some of the top findings of the report were revealed at the British Council’s Going Global 2013 conference in March. The first volume, on higher education trends and emerging opportunities to 2020, predicted that growth in global student mobility would slow and overseas delivery of higher education would expand. More...