By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In Commentary, Jeremy Rappleye and Edward Vickers examine different scenarios regarding Japan’s ambitious Super Global Universities programme, and warn that continued segregation of international faculty and students will not lead to successful internationalisation. Nita Temmerman says that a major challenge for online learning in developing countries to address is that the learner and teacher are separated, as are the learners from each other, in societies that place high value on social contact. Ruwayshid Alruwaili says the surprising move to merge the ministries of higher education and education is feared to represent a policy drift in higher education in Saudi Arabia. And Nico Cloete discusses the flawed ideology of ‘free higher education’ in developing countries, with particular reference to the protest calls in South Africa.
In our World Blog this week Rahul Choudaha says that the last thing any well-intentioned institution wants is to treat international students as ‘cash cows’ – they need rather to investigate and invest in international student success.
In Features, Jan Petter Myklebust examines the strategies behind the entry of four Irish universities into the 50 top-performing universities’ list in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme this year.
There are two Special Reports in this issue. The first focuses on the WISE Summit held in Qatar last week, from which Nic Mitchell writes about the value of private sector funding of higher education. The second covers the Eighth Annual International Conference of the South African Technology Network, from which Karen MacGregor reports on how to encourage entrepreneurship in higher education. Read more...