By Michael Gardner. The Global Young Academy, an international society of young scientists, has launched an initiative to support African academics aiming to take leading roles in projects. The Africa Science Leadership Program, or ASLP, will be run by the University of Pretoria in South Africa in partnership with the academy. Read more...

By Jane Marshall. France’s dynamic state secretary for higher education and research, Geneviève Fioraso, has resigned for health reasons. Fioraso’s achievements during her tenure included a major national debate into the future of higher education and research which led to a new framework law.
She was also able to maintain levels of funding and jobs during a time of austerity and cuts in other budgets; simplify processes for first and masters degrees; and launch an ambitious building programme for student housing.
Among her many achievements, she extended student grants, introduced a national ‘student-entrepreneur’ statute, and adopted reforms – opposed by research unions – to increase research competitiveness while working towards bringing universities and the selective grandes écoles closer together – all this while managing a budget of €23 billion [US$25 billion] for more than 200 institutions. Read more...

By Karen MacGregor. From 2012 to 2014, University World News conducted and published a series of interviews with higher education leaders in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This week we publish a selection of the interviews in a freely available e-book that carries the title of the article series, “Thoughts and Experiences of African University Leaders”. Read more...

By Wagdy Sawahel. Arab Muslim students and academics studying and working in western universities and associated research centres are concerned about their safety following last month’s killings of three Arab students near America’s University of North Carolina.
"This was a hate crime – a crime that would have been defined as terrorism if the roles were reversed," several Muslim student associations and Western academics wrote in an open letter to the campus community about the shootings. Read more...

By Nico Cloete. In a seminal 1993 article, Manuel Castells argued that universities are social systems and historically produced institutions that attempt to make seemingly contradictory functions compatible. He described the four functions of universities as: producing values and social legitimation, selecting the dominant elites, training the labour force, and generating scientific knowledge and supporting its application in society. Read more...

By Nico Cloete. The challenge for higher education systems in Africa is not to have universities as societal transformers, or to isolate universities from society into secluded laboratories or the boardrooms of multinational firms, but to develop institutions that are solid and dynamic enough to withstand tensions that will trigger the simultaneous performance of seemingly contradictory functions. Read more...

By Thierry M Luescher-Mamashela. Flagship and elite universities especially have played a key role in the selection of elites; in their socialisation and the formation of networks for their social cohesion. Read more...

By Patrício Langa. Academic incentives as a driver for knowledge outputs have been controversial in many higher education and research systems. Read more...

By Peter Maassen. Of the four core functions of universities identified by Manuel Castells [1], the African university is struggling most with revitalising its research function. All relevant indicators show that despite the existence of a number of highly productive scholars and academic units, overall the research productivity of nationally leading African universities is lagging far behind productivity at similar universities in the rest of the world. Read more...

By Makki Marseilles. Greek universities were brought to the brink of bankruptcy as a result of the previous government’s policies. These included reductions in state funding of almost 60%, a huge cut in administrative staff to the extent of paralysis, and student transfers from district universities to metropolitan ones beyond the ability of the latter to cater for them. Read more...