By Brendan O'Malley. Eight hours before Aya Waller-Bey was due to jump on a plane from Detroit to London to take up a scholarship at Cambridge University she was sitting in a courtroom watching as a judge sentenced her sister to two years behind bars for assault with intent to do bodily harm during an armed robbery. Read more...

By Gad Yair and Nofar Gueta. How many positive experiences do students have in their department? Are institutions aware of the many negative experiences that first generation students come up against – and do they attempt to turn those negative experiences into positive ones? What are the drivers for such transformative experiences and can we use them to increase equity and expand students' life chances. Read more...

By William New. Over the past decade there have been many changes in the political and social situation for Roma, some of which might even qualify as progress, but we have also witnessed the re-emergence of violent prejudices one might have hoped were extinct, or at least regulated. Read more...

By Bin Wu and W John Morgan. China is a country marked by sharp differences in regional development and by social inequalities, especially between rural and urban areas. This is echoed in access to higher education opportunities. Read more...

By Brendan O'Malley. Nearly three decades ago Geeta Dharmarajan had a vision. She wanted to bring education to the children of Delhi’s overcrowded slums – who were being denied school because they had to work, selling patties or collecting rubbish to help their family survive – but she did not believe traditional teaching methods would succeed. Read more...

By Rebecca Farnum. The role of academia in public life and social change has always been debated. Many people critique universities as ‘Ivory Towers’, with little relevance to the ‘real’ world. Yet research – much of it taking place in universities – has been critical to the creation of technology and the arts. Read more...

By Suellen Shay. It has become common in discussions about higher education and equity to draw on the metaphor of ‘pathways’. This metaphor has usefully focused attention on access: the gap between school and university, the articulation between and across different tiers of the system and a range of barriers faced by students from traditionally underrepresented communities. Read more...

By Elizabeth de Kadt, Brenda Leibowitz and Precious Sipuka. Higher education has been in the spotlight in South Africa, with students demanding greater access – including epistemological access – and decolonising of the curriculum. In the press, too, have been the unsatisfactory completion rates of students. Read more...

By Eilis Ferran. I was recently invited to address a meeting of the International Alliance of Research Universities at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. The theme was “Global transformation” and I spoke about “Global universities and their global responsibilities”. Stimulated by the lively discussion and energised by the powerful strategic transformation process underway at our host institution, I have continued to reflect on the theme. Read more...

By Sharon Dell. Former South African president Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom that for young black South Africans like himself, the University of Fort Hare was “Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale, all rolled into one”. Read more...