The European Students’ Union (ESU) strongly supports the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) that facilitates the studies of third-country nationals within the European Union (EU).
Visas and residency permits are among the largest obstacles that non-EU nationals face when seeking studies in the EU. Simpler administrative immigration procedures can greatly increase the participation and mobility of non-EU countries and students that are involved in the Bologna Process, such as the Western-Balkans, Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus. More...

A new edition of Brazilian university ranking was just published. Brazil’s leading newspapers, the “Folha de São Paulo just published he third edition of the RUF (Ranking Universitário Folha). The RUF rankings are based on 5 basic and weighted criteria: 42% research (with 8 different indicators), 32% teaching quality (4 indicators) 18% labor market evaluation (from a survey with almost 2000 professionals responsible for recruiting to the labor market), 4% internationalization (2 indicators) and 4% innovation (1 indicator).
Source
http://ruf.folha.uol.com.br/2014/. More...

In the QS World University Ranking 2014-15  the two British universities, Cambridge and Imperial College London, rise up to joint second place, ahead of Harvard and every other American institution except for MIT. British universities took four out of the top six places.
Source
Topuniversities. More...

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released data about tertiary education that documents rising levels of education and skills in member countries. Russia, Canada, Japan, Israel and the USA have the largest proportion of adults, between the ages of 25 and 64, who have a tertiary education. The lowest percentages are found in Brazil, Indonesia and China.
Source
Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators. More...

On the occasion of International Literacy Day, an International Conference on “Girls’ and Women’s Literacy and Education: Foundation for Sustainable Development” took place in Dhaka on 8 September 2014. It was organised by the Government of Bangladesh in partnership with UNESCO and in support of the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative. The inaugural session was attended by around 2,000 participants, including the Prime Minister of Bangladesh as the Chief Guest, the Director-General of UNESCO as Guest of Honour, eight Ministers and Deputy Ministers, representatives of civil society organisations, bilateral donors, UN agencies and a big group of school children. During this session, the 2014 UNESCO Confucius and King Sejong Literacy Prizes were awarded to programmes from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, South Africa/USA and Spain. More...

EUA’s Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, a milestone that has been marked by the launch of a new publication and an event in Brussels on 18 September.
Created in 1994, IEP is an independent membership service of the European University Association (EUA) which has carried out over 300 institutional evaluations in higher education institutions (HEI), in Europe and worldwide, and a number of system-level evaluations in countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Romania. The mission of IEP is to support HEIs and systems in developing their capacity for change through the process of institutional evaluation.
The new publication, entitled “A twenty-year contribution to institutional change: EUA’s Institutional Evaluation Programme” brings together a series of papers and articles that have been provided by a panel of authors who have been involved with the Programme over the last two decades. More...

EUA’s Council for Doctoral Education (EUA-CDE) is to prepare a new policy initiative designed to set the agenda for doctoral education in the next decade.
Since the publication of EUA’s Salzburg Principles in 2005 and the Salzburg Recommendations in 2010, European universities have developed a common vision for developing institutional structures for doctoral education, mostly through doctoral schools. More...

On 16 September, the European Commission (EC) presented its latest European Research Area (ERA) Progress Report, which aims to provide an update on progress towards the ERA priorities. The report is accompanied by the ERA facts and figures 2014 publication which includes a section with details of actions carried out by EUA and other European organisations involved in the ERA Stakeholder platform.
To complement the ERA Progress Report, EUA has also published this week further details of its recent ERA-related activities and which highlight the contribution of universities to achieving the ERA goals.
According to the European Commission, its 2014 ERA Progress Report published this week confirms that the ERA partnership between member states, research stakeholders and the Commission has made good progress in delivering ERA. More...