Academic freedom under threat – from governance

By Geoff Maslen. In our Commentary section this week, Michael Schwartz and William M Bowen write about authoritarianism in higher education and how it is capable of limiting or even blocking the right to dissent. Academic freedom, they say, easily becomes threatened and then diminished for lack of vigilance over governance processes.
In the same section, Anna Magyar and Anna Robinson-Pant refer to the role of student recruitment agents and argue they should be seen as part of a collective approach to internationalisation, ensuring that students are seen not just as an economic but a learning resource.
In Features, John Roddick of Flinders University in South Australia describes how countries around the world face the loss of their high-cost manufacturing due to low-cost mass production in Asia. Flinders is showing this can be countered by the university’s reshaping of a huge former car manufacturing plant to house its school of computer science, engineering and mathematics – which has attracted a growing number of design and technology companies.
And finally, Munyaradzi Makoni reports on a novel Norwegian scheme that developing countries could use to encourage their postgraduates to stay home and not migrate abroad. Read more...