By Alina Cordova. The ‘internationalisation of education’ is a term which often makes the people who use it sound naïve and those who hear it cringe with understandable scepticism. However, in the last couple of decades, aided, most certainly, by the explosion of electronic news and social media, many institutions of higher learning have had to come to terms with this trend in order to secure a relevant position in global rankings. Read more...

By Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach. The 2015 annual conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators took place in Boston, USA, on 24-29 May. A record number of over 11,000 participants demonstrated the increasing importance of international education, not only in the United States but also in the rest of the world since the number of international participants from over 100 countries was also at a record high. Read more...

By Jan Petter Myklebust. Huge increases in the number of students graduating from university with PhDs are occurring in countries around the world, delegates attending a conference on doctoral education were told. Read more...

By Jan Petter Myklebust and Ian R Dobson. Yle, the Finnish broadcasting corporation, recently published a survey on “likely or extremely likely threats to Finnish security”. The majority of respondents (54%) were concerned about a “drawn-out economic depression”, far in excess of other concerns: “problems in domestic politics” (28%) and “problems in foreign politics” (22%). Even the “threat of terrorism” (20%), “influx of refugees” (16%) and “extreme weather” (15%) were of relatively minor concern. Read more...

By Mary Beth Marklein. Noting a "sense of urgency for a shared understanding" of higher education quality in an increasingly global landscape, an international advisory group has released a set of principles around which it suggests quality assurance policy might be organised. Read more...

By Nick Holdsworth. Russian scientists and intellectuals mounted a rare public protest on 6 June to voice their fears that research and freedom of enquiry are under threat from the Kremlin. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. Despite repeated bans by China’s education authorities, new fake universities and other scams continue to pop up on blacklists that are published every year to alert the Chinese public. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. China’s universities have made strong progress in two Asia rankings released last week, while Saudi Arabia and Brazil dominate in QS’s Arab Region and Latin America rankings respectively. Read more...

By Yojana Sharma. An increase in higher education enrolment provides benefits to societies generally but rapid expansion has also put pressure on national budgets and raised concerns in providing quality, equity and access. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley. There is no “silver bullet” that will guarantee success in building a national eco-system for commercialised research, a study on the experience in four countries has found. Read more...