High debt and worthless degrees: India must crack down on this scourge

By Brendan O’Malley – Managing Editor. In Commentary, Pushkar urges the Indian government to crack down on the many unscrupulous universities which leave students with high debt and useless degrees. David Stremba and Scott Spragg advise on ways US universities can be pro-active in addressing the prospect of dwindling numbers of Chinese students. And Yegor Stadny discusses a new performance-based funding model for Ukrainian universities, and says Ukraine needs to start creating the data systems required to implement a new funding system.
In our series on Transformative Leadership in which University World News is partnering with The MasterCard Foundation, Margaret Andrews looks at the innovative approaches many business schools have developed in their attempts to teach students leadership.
We publish the last of a three-part Special Report on Student Activism and Issues. Yojana Sharma overviews the rise of student movements in Asia, which have notched up considerable achievements but need to garner societal support to survive, and she also reports on student groups in Thailand that are struggling for democracy in the face of oppression.
Among others, there is also a set of articles on reforming or ‘decolonising’ the curriculum – by Calum Mitchell in the United Kingdom, Kenyan postgraduate student Njoki Wamai and Brian Kamanzi in South Africa.
Lastly, in Features, Rebecca Warden reports on discussions at the Third Arab-Euro Conference on Higher Education in Spain on what opportunities universities in Europe and the Middle East are offering Syrian refugees and on what should be done to streamline efforts. Read more...