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By Richard J Edelstein and John Aubrey Douglass. Despite the significant increase in the number and type of international activities – from branch campuses to MOOCs and aggressive international student recruitment – many institutional efforts appear to be launched without a clear idea of best practices or how specific activities might be productive and meaningful for a particular institution. Empirical knowledge of how and why institutions expand these activities, and whether they are successful, remains largely anecdotal.
Why do universities embark on new projects and activities that engage the institution outside of its national boundaries? What motivates individuals and their institutions to include transnational relations among their core strategic interests and concerns when considering the future path for success? Why are more foreign students and faculty recruited and why are curricula and research agendas more international and global in scope?
The motivation of institutions, and their leaders, appears to be multiple and complex. As part of our larger effort to generate a taxonomy of different kinds of international engagement by universities, and reflecting a recent research paper published as part of a larger project based at the University of California, Berkeley, we offer here an exploration of possible institutional logics and rationales used to justify what are sometimes significant financial and institutional commitments. More...

By Hans de Wit and Fiona Hunter. When the European Association for International Education, or EAIE, was founded in 1989 in Amsterdam, Europe was a different place in many ways.
Cold War thinking still dominated worldviews, the European Community had 12 member countries compared to the current 28 of the European Union, and the Euro had not yet been introduced as a common currency. Asian economies were beginning to emerge, but Asian countries were considered more Third World than New World and able to challenge Old Europe. More...

By Wachira Kigotho. The Ministry of Education in Kenya has directed universities to shut campuses and constituent colleges that are situated near rubbish dumps, quarries or factories.
Urging the Commission for University Education, or CUE, to enforce the order, Cabinet Education Secretary Professor Jacob Kaimenyi said the government had noted with concern that some campuses were located in environments that could be injurious to students. More...

Other findings include that transnational education, or TNE, is still not a policy priority for many countries. While incentives to attract foreign universities were helping to drive activity, there were questions around sustainability in their absence, and TNE – especially branch campuses – was not attracting foreign direct investment. Further, there was a need for sending and host countries to together define transnational education, and the importance of a national TNE framework and institutional-level policies in host countries “cannot be overstated”.
The Shape of Things to Come – The evolution of transnational education: data, definitions, opportunities and impacts analysis was published last Thursday as the second volume in a series. Some of the top findings of the report were revealed at the British Council’s Going Global 2013 conference in March. The first volume, on higher education trends and emerging opportunities to 2020, predicted that growth in global student mobility would slow and overseas delivery of higher education would expand. More...

By Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Mitchell Duneier once was a MOOC star. But today he's more like a conscientious objector. Worried that massive open online courses might lead United States legislators to cut state university budgets, the Princeton University sociology professor has pulled out of the movement – at least for now. More...

By David Jobbins. A new global league table from the UK’s Times Higher Education – ranking universities by the number of their graduates who are chief executive officers of the world’s largest companies – was published last week. One in 20 CEOs of Fortune Global 500 companies has at least one degree from Harvard, according to the THE’s Alma Mater Index: Global Executives 2013. Second place is taken by the University of Tokyo, with 3% of alumni in the list.
The highest-placed UK institution is the University of Oxford at number 21, while the US dominates the top 10 with four institutions: Harvard first, Stanford third, the University of Pennsylvania seventh and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology eighth.
France is represented by three institutions – École Polytechnique in fourth place, HEC Paris in fifth and École Nationale d’Administration in sixth. More...

By Michael Gardner. Figures released by the Federal Statistical Office suggest that the number of women in Germany holding a doctoral degree is on the increase. However, women continue to be underrepresented in research and development. The survey on the careers of highly qualified people – those having graduated from a higher education institution with or without a doctoral degree – was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, or BMBF.
The share of the overall population holding degrees has seen a significant increase, from 10.5% in 2001 to 13.2 % in 2011. In this period, more and more women opted for doctoral degrees. Among those under 45 years old, at 41% the share of women holding a doctoral degree in 2011 was almost twice as high as it was among those who were 55 years old or older (22%). More...

By Ameen Amjad Khan. The World Bank has called on the Afghan government to increase the proportion of women enrolled in universities. Women currently make up just 19% of students, according to a new report on Afghanistan’s higher education – a decline in the male-female ratio in universities compared to a decade ago even though overall numbers have increased.
“Increasing female enrolent in universities is a top priority for the future development of higher education,” said the report completed last year and launched jointly by the World Bank and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education in Kabul on 30 August. More...

By Suvendrini Kakuchi. The Sri Lankan government is to launch new vocational degrees – a landmark step for an education system long dominated at the pinnacle by traditional state universities. It is hoped that the move will also help to reduce youth unemployment.
The new degrees, to be launched within a year under the slogan of a National Vocational Qualification, will combine academic and practical elements. More...

By María Elena Hurtado. Appalling results in the Prueba Inicia, or Start Test – a voluntary national exam that assesses the competence of Chilean teaching graduates – is forcing the government and universities to improve teacher training and make the teaching profession more attractive. Over half of new teaching graduates who took the test did not know their specific subjects or how to impart them, according to the results of the test, announced on 22 August.
“The results are alarming…extremely worrying,” said Education Minister Carolina Schmidt. More...