By Shashi Tharoor. Less than one per cent of students pursuing higher studies opt for research oriented courses, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Monday.
"Out of the total enrolments in higher education, the percentage of students enrolling in the field of research is about 0.79 per cent," minister of state in human resource development (HRD) Shashi Tharoor told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply to a query. Read more...

THE University of East London (UEL) has ordered an investigation into its international activities after the closure of its Cyprus campus that recruited just 17 students in its first six months. 
According to the Times’ Higher Education supplement, UEL has asked Sir David Melville, former vice-chancellor of Middlesex and Kent universities and current chairman of Pearson Education, to carry out the investigation. 
News that the UEL was closing its Cyprus campus emerged in April but Cyprus Mail sources said that operations would not cease until March of next year. Read more...

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - The Pan African University has received a major boost with a grant support of US$45 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB), according to a statement from the African Union received by PANA on Thursday.
The agreement was signed in Tunis on Tuesday by the AU Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology, Mr Martial de Paul Ikounga, and the Vice President for Agriculture, Human Development and Governance of AfDB, Mr Aly Abou-Sabaa.
The Pan African University is a flagship programme of the African Union, which aims at ensuring that the African University is re-established at the core of Africa’s development, as a veritable instrument for achieving the AU vision of prosperity, peace and integration.
The statement said PAU’s mission was to exemplify excellence and nurture quality in African Higher Education and Research. Read more...

As more than 13,000 students who qualified for a university place in Hong Kong this summer are denied a spot due to space shortages, Samuel Lai explores our city’s higher education crisis. 
University places should be available to all those who qualified for them because of their ability and attainment,” declared Lord Robbins in the 1960s, the then head of the economics department at the London School of Economics. A bit more than half a century later, however, that ideal is far from the reality in Hong Kong. Over the years, the city has seen an increasing number of students excelling at school, attaining the minimum required scores to attend university. But at the same time, the available publicly funded university places have been frozen, leading to a discrepancy between the number of students reaching the requisite standard and the number actually getting a place at a local university. This summer saw this gap rise to its greatest ever level. More...