A recent Stanford University Report revealed that students’ abilities to distinguish between questionable and valid online content needed work. More...

On the TV show Suits, Mike Ross’s character charges a hefty fee to students to take the LSAT (law school admission test) for them. Ross has a stellar memory and a remarkable ability to take tests without getting crushed by stress — he is the perfect “contract cheater.” Later, Ross builds a career as a lawyer based on fake credentials, presumably from Harvard. More...

Outside a courthouse in Cape Town in South Africa demonstrators performed a short skit to draw attention to the dangers of a “secret nuclear deal” that could cost the country more than a trillion rand and indebt citizens for many decades to come, while no doubt enriching a handful of well-connected elites. More...

Pursuing a professional degree can be extremely stressful for students, who often experience it as a time riddled with anxiety, uncertainty, fear and financial challenge. More...

Universities are no longer simply institutions of learning. Over the past 50 years, they have also become important players in global financial markets. They have become institutional investors. More...

Sudan’s three oldest public universities – Juba, Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile – all have their origins in southern Sudan. In the late 1980s they were relocated to Khartoum in the north. This was ostensibly done to protect students and faculty from the war. It also allowed the regime to execute the war away from the scrutiny of intellectuals. In exile the universities flourished, acquiring additional property and staff. More...

In Cape Town, South Africa, a group of high school boys compiled a song which included the lyrics: “I feel pain unearthly because of my hatred of kaffirs”. The word “kaffir” is an apartheid-era racial slur and possibly the most offensive word in the South African lexicon. At the University of Witwatersrand, also in South Africa, the phrase “Kill a Jew” was spray-painted on one of its main buildings. More...

Across Africa, students arrive on campuses full of hope that a university degree will improve their lives. The reality is far less certain. More...

Maori anthropologist Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in her seminal work Decolonising Methodologies, argues that

Re-search is a dirty word.

Hyphenating “research” into “re-search” is very useful because it reveals what is involved, what it really means, and goes beyond the naive view of “research” as an innocent pursuit of knowledge. More...

When I started lecturing full-time a little over five years ago, I knew what everybody does: that we all learn better by doing. I knew that “active learning” – literally doing anything apart from just talking through a PowerPoint presentation – is the way to go. More...