By Ilaria Bertini. British universities have strong connections to the fossil fuels industry, with the equivalent of £2,083 invested for each UK student in the sector, according to a report by People & Planet. 
The study, produced by the student campaign network alongside oil and gas watchdog Platform and divestment group 350.org estimates that universities have £5.2 billion invested in oil and gas companies. It also reveals that senior executives from BP and Shell have received 20 awards and honorary degrees from British universities over the past decade. More...

By Cindy Sui. Every night after dinner, many of Taiwan's older people go out to nearby parks to chat with their neighbours, or stay home to watch TV and play with the grandchildren - but not 62-year-old Yu Chin-shan. He takes his briefcase full of books and notebooks, and goes to college. The semi-retired Mr Yu owns an IT services company and has been a boss for 20 years. But now he wants to fulfil a dream he couldn't afford when he was younger. More...

By Jennifer Schuessler. ‘Ebony and Ivy,’ About How Slavery Helped Universities Grow. When Craig Steven Wilder first began digging around in university archives in 2002 for material linking universities to slavery, he recalled recently, he was “a little bashful” about what he was looking for. More...

By JEMIMAH WANGUI. The Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) on Monday called for the harmonisation of the curriculum for higher education within the East African Community countries.
Mayunga Nkunya the Executive Secretary IUCEA explained that the differing curriculums make it hard for graduands to successfully work away from home.
“We need to have a society that has skills that allows them to work within the EAC without a hitch. This will help deal with the problem of unemployment as it creates options that offer diversification,” he said.
The IUCEA official called for the bench marking of the quality of education to create a regional framework for the education system. More...

By Tom Myatt. Defend the Irish University will combat "massive underfunding" and "commercialisation" in Irish universities. A new political movement has been launched by a group of academics at Dublin City University which seeks a number of sweeping reforms to third-level education in Ireland. Defend the Irish University, led by Professor Ronaldo Munck, is soon to launch a public petition to the Irish Government with a comprehensive ten-point agenda. The group’s formation is a reaction to what it calls “massive underfunding combined with commercialisation and managerialism” in Irish universities. More...

Universities should be spending more time on teaching, according to David Willetts. In a new report, the Universities Minister suggests that the system has become "lopsided" with institutions focusing more on research than on teaching students. He said that given the growth in the number of students it was "surprising" that the time devoted to teaching had fallen, and argued that the "pendulum has swung too far away".
Mr Willetts' report, for the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank, looks at the UK's higher education system in the 50 years since the Robbins Report was published. More...

By Will Coldwell. A 'lost generation' from recession-hit Europe flocks to Britain to seek work – and finds it's not always what they hoped it would be. Nothing tastes quite as good as a coffee brewed by an expert barista. However, increasingly the chances are that the person serving you will have a high level of expertise in something a bit more substantial than coffee. With students and graduates from recession-hit Europe moving to the UK in their droves in the hope of finding work, the person serving you that cappuccino could well have a PhD. Dubbed the "lost generation", it is not hard to come by the stories of the qualified and aspirational young people from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece who are struggling to find employment in the UK. More...

By Kim Jacobson. A glass ceiling remains in place for female medical research scientists in Australia. Although approximately 50% of PhD students and postdoctoral scientists are female, males run the majority of research laboratories. Despite some reform over the past three decades, there is still an exodus of female scientists from academic research at the transitional stage between a postdoctoral researcher and laboratory head. More...