By Hans de Wit. ‘Africa is Rising’, ‘The New Africa’, ‘Africa Works’! These are some of the headlines Professor Ton Dietz, director of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, showed at a seminar in Brussels on 13 December 2013 with the title “For Mutual Gain: Euro-African cooperation in higher education”.
The session was organised by the Academic Cooperation Association, or ACA, in partnership with the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, the European Association for International Education and the European University Association, or EUA. Read more...

By Louise Morley. Women have never been better represented in higher education than they are today. Globally, female students outnumber male students in two out of every three countries, according to data reported to UNESCO, while the number of women enrolled in tertiary institutions has grown almost twice as fast as that of men since 1970.
Gender equality legislation, socio-economic and de-traditionalisation factors have all played a part in this welcome trend, yet so far they appear to have had relatively little impact on opportunities for women to reach senior management and academic leadership positions in the sector.
My paper, “Lost Leaders: Women in the global academy”, presented at the 2013 Society for Research into Higher Education conference, as part of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research, or CHEER, symposium “Performing Difference in the Global Academy”, examined the reasons behind women’s absence from research and leadership roles in higher education. Read more...

By Ivan F Pacheco and Ane Turner Johnson. What role have universities played during armed conflict and post-conflict? International organisations such as UNESCO and the World Bank have acknowledged the importance of higher education for economic development. They have also stressed the importance of economic development to achieve peace in conflict-affected nations. However, the connection between higher education and peace building remains largely unexplored. Read more...

By Claire Morel. A recent synthesis report by seven independent experts presented the main results achieved through the first generation of 57 Erasmus Mundus joint masters programmes. Its recommendations are particularly timely since joint masters degrees will continue to be financed under Europe’s new Erasmus+ programme that started in January 2014. Read more...

By Richard H Brodhead. What is a research university, and what value can it offer to society? Last October, the associations of leading academic institutions in the United States, Europe, Australia and China attempted to answer this question. Their document, called the Hefei Statement, is a powerful piece of thinking, remarkable for its depth of reflection on the function and value of research universities. Read more...

By Richard Holmes. When global university rankings started with the publication of the first Academic Ranking of World Universities, or ARWU, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University back in 2003 and the Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings in 2004, interest was patchy. Latin America, South Asia, the Arab and Muslim worlds and East and Central Europe generally ignored them. Read more...

By Dante J Salto. Profit-making in higher education engages controversial issues and debates involving the proper bounds of market activity. While it is widely recognised that many non-profit institutions engage in profit-making, this article deals with those institutions that are legally allowed to distribute revenues among shareholders and specifically focuses on Brazil – one of the world’s largest higher education for-profit sub-sectors. Brazil’s for-profits enrolled over two million students in 2010 – 43% of the private sector and 32% of the overall higher education system. Read more...

By Marguerite Dennis. The internet has rendered geography irrelevant and digital options are changing consumer purchasing decisions all over the world. Computers assist pilots in airplanes, automatic teller machines replace the bank teller in most cities in the world, robot-guided mechanical arms operate in hospitals and digital newspapers and magazines are the preferred method of reading for an increasing number of people. And when was the last time you booked a flight through a travel agent? Read more...

By Crystal Tai. Plans to open more branches of foreign universities in South Korea’s Incheon Free Economic Zone – IFEZ – are back on track, say managers of the development. The United States-based George Mason University and University of Utah, and Ghent University in Belgium, are planning to open branches at Incheon this year. Read more...

By Hiep Pham. Vietnam is aiming for at least one ‘world-class’ national university to emerge by 2020, while also upgrading regional research-led universities to compete with the best in Asia by 2015 – in time for the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, economic community. Read more...