By Munyaradzi Makoni. The Southern African Regional Universities Association, SARUA, has launched a network to strengthen curriculum development across the region. Its first project is the development of a curriculum for a masters degree in climate change. Read more...

By Wagdy Sawahel. In an effort to boost quality and make institutions more globally competitive, Egypt is planning to launch a national university ranking system. The step will place Egypt at the forefront of African countries producing rankings, along with Nigeria and Kenya. Read more...

By Jane Marshall. Members of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, or OIF, a Paris-based organisation of 77 French-speaking countries and governments, said they undertook to encourage reciprocal knowledge, circulation and free use of digital university resources between their higher education institutions. Read more...

By Ard Jongsma. African university leaders overwhelmingly agree that forging ahead with the internationalisation of higher education is a matter of urgency. At the 2015 Conference of Rectors, Vice Chancellors and Presidents of African Universities in Kigali, Rwanda, they even seemed to be approaching a sound level of agreement on how to get there. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. This week in Commentary, James King analyses the possible negative implications for Syrian refugee students and academics of this month’s elections in Turkey, and calls on the international community to support the country’s commitment to refugee education.
Alex Usher finds several structural reasons why Russian universities are unlikely to shoot up the global rankings, despite heavy investment in Project 5-100. Roger Chao Jr maintains that Canada’s international education strategy is too market-driven and needs a broader vision as well as input from experts on internationalisation, and Peter Halligan argues that small countries such as Wales need ongoing investment and long-term strategy to build research capacity and win more competitive research funding.
In World Blog, Margaret Andrews calls on business schools to respond to the demands of employers around the world who want graduates with ‘soft skills’.
In Features, Mary Beth Marklein describes how Venezuelan students abroad are suffering following a change in their country’s currency control policy. Peta Lee unpacks a study showing that lack of support for the study-to-work transition of international students in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden is undermining their ‘model immigrant’ strategies, and Esther Nakkazi attends a meeting in Uganda of Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa, or DRUSSA, which aims to build capacity in universities to improve Africa’s research usage. Read more...

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In our World Blog, Hans de Wit and Philip G Altbach call for balance in the battle between increasing commercialisation and national self-interest evident in international education on the one hand and the ideals of internationalisation on the other.
In this week’s Commentary, Alina Cordova writes from experience about the positive prospects for internationalisation of smaller campuses with limited resources, with an emphasis on producing global students adaptable to any environment.
Stella-Maris Orim addresses the implications of the casual approach of Nigerian students and academics to plagiarism based on evidence from a doctoral research project, particularly for Nigerian students wanting to study abroad. And Pamela Tate describes a model which improves lives through better employment linked to better education and recognition of prior learning, which she believes can be replicated worldwide.
In Features, Yojana Sharma reports on China’s launch of a new international alliance of universities ostensibly to provide research and engineering support for China’s mammoth ‘One Belt, One Road’ project along the ancient Silk Road route.
Munyaradzi Makoni reports that the MasterCard Foundation will provide US$25 million in funding to the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, mostly to support disadvantaged students.
In a second Special Report on the British Council’s Going Global conference for international education leaders held in London, Yojana Sharma examines how the world’s largest higher education systems by student enrolments have struggled to address the challenges of quality and equity. And Brendan O’Malley reports on support for a global fund for higher education to enable alternative provision to be made during times of war and other disasters. Read more...