World insight

The Pacific nation’s ambitions to harness its universities to drive economic growth face many challenges, says Roger Smyth

Pledges of huge investments in higher education to secure the tech giant’s second headquarters could strain academic autonomy, says Michelle Dimino

A ban on political advocacy and remedial action for possession of ‘radical concepts’ could undermine the special administrative region’s universities, says Michael O’Sullivan

The Canadian government’s excessive policing of privacy makes it intolerably onerous to access its datasets, says Karen Robson

High-cost meritocracy à la française will cut little ice with discerning international students, says Juliette Torabian

Maintaining a breadth of curricular offerings is crucial if subjects outside the sciences are to retain their attraction in the digital age, says Dean Forbes

PhDs are becoming more programmatic in many countries, but the German one-on-one model retains considerable influence, says Glen Jones

Analysis of wage premiums from tertiary education suggests that the system struggles to deliver the changing skills that the economy demands, says Stephen Parker

The UK’s Commons Education Committee has surveyed many issues, but its simple-minded approach is largely unhelpful, says Andrew McRae  

Political efforts to silence academic critics are unlikely to end despite clarification that universities are not obliged to ban them, says Pushkar

China’s growing presence in Africa is causing many students to head to Asia rather than Western universities, says Zahir Irani

The relaxation of the research excellence framework’s submission rules could see research-intensive universities clustered on near-maximum scores, warms Dominic Dean

If academics object to students’ intended destinations, they have a right not to write, says David Palumbo-Liu

The mooted merger of the universities of Adelaide and South Australia would cast a long shadow over the city’s other major university, says Gavin Moodie

A move to combat India’s love affair with predatory journals is an encouraging sign – even if it took a newspaper exposé to prompt it, says Pushkar

A failure to treat staff fairly and consistently impedes academic standards and hurts students, says Sheikh Nahid Neazy

Australian universities are nervous about how governments, students and their own academics will react to new legal curbs on ‘foreign influence’, says Dean Forbes

Soul-searching is required by institutions if they want to survive the alarming decline in student numbers that will leave many classrooms empty, says Jayden Kim

Provided universities offer other avenues to debate contentious issues, institutes’ pro-China stance should not be a deal-breaker, says Jeffrey Gil

Pakistani lecturers and students tend to be similar in age, which makes romances inevitable. Universities must do more to raise awareness of the potential fallout of such relationships, say Abur Rehman Cheema and Mehvish Riaz

Years of slogging through English-language crushes Chinese students' love of learning before they even get to an overseas university, says Bob Fonow

The public sector has not expanded quickly enough to meet the demand for college degrees in India

Appealing to students and their families made electoral sense for the Labour Party, but its promises have saddled it with a lot of low-value spending, says Roger Smyth

France’s new ‘Parcoursup’ system for university entry is intensifying the nation’s historical agonies over whether selectivity is compatible with égalité, says Louise Lyle

Universities that realise that innovation won’t always come via the top of league tables are the ones that will thrive in challenging times, says Maggie Dallman

Free tuition policies might appear to alleviate student debt and create more access to higher education, but the reality is a far less equitable system, says Ariane de Gayardon

The partnership between VinGroup and Cornell to establish a world-class university in Vietnam has many challenges to overcome, starting with gaining the trust of local students and parents, argues Matthew D. Edward

Looking at past trends, Rahul Choudaha predicts the motivations and expectations of the next wave of global students

It’s time for students to step in and end the political stalemate on stopping gun violence on university campuses, says Sarah Kenny

Faculties without borders are the key to turning multidisciplinarity into more than a buzzword, says Duncan Ivison

History shows that the Belt and Road initiative will be successful only if it boosts human capital, as well as physical infrastructure, says Alan Ruby

Rigid, top-down tie-ups will do nothing to foster quality or European identity, says Jan Palmowski

Too many poorer students across Europe are unable to maximise their learning owing to inadequate financial support, argues Simon Marginson

If elements of society feel they have no stake in humanities and social science research, their support for it will evaporate, warns Musa al-Gharbi

The apparent theft of exam papers in Papua New Guinea suggests to John Warren that we should all be more transparent over marking mishaps   

Social scientists’ scepticism about research oversight also relates to the curiously bad press it gets in Western literature, writes Katarzyna Kaczmarska 

New Zealand is reaping many benefits from reducing the cost of a PhD for international students a decade ago, says Brett Berquist

Parochialism makes sense from a career point of view, but is disastrous for public discourse, say Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Mitchell L. Stevens

Diplomatic dinner celebrating US-Australian relations is only the entrée to a full-blown battle over funding cuts that has put the demand-driven system on ice, says John Ross

Fears that the arrival of foreign universities could decimate native provision have apparently been set aside by ministers, writes Martin Surya Mulyadi  

Canadian universities’ recruitment of teachers must be done purely on academic merit, say Rodney Clifton and Alexandra Burnett 

US universities’ public approval is best guaranteed by boldly defending non-partisan values such as tolerance and free speech, says Darren Linvill

Just as the ‘little red dot’ city state has made an indelible mark on the global stage, president of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Subra Suresh examines how his institution has garnered attention

Qatar is improving its university system faster than any other world economy, explains Cesar Wazen

The huge economic benefits of international students to the US economy must not be ignored by President Trump, warns one US university leader

Scott Anthony takes issue with claims that Singapore’s leading universities have neglected local intellectual life

Pakistani journals lack the professionalism and expertise to support a thriving knowledge economy, say Abdur Rehman Cheema and Mehvish Riaz

Universities have a big role to play in counteracting the nationalist sentiment emerging around the world, Amit Chakma says ahead of 2018 Asia Universities Summit

The uncapped system had many benefits but its cost was ultimately too high for politicians to bear, writes Andrew Norton

An open access deal between German authors in journals published by Elsevier could be problematic, say Alex Holcombe and Björn Brembs

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam looks at restrictions to academic freedom in what he describes as an age of ‘psycho-nationalism’

Controversy in Canada over support for blue-skies research would diminish if more researchers took Pasteur’s approach, says Creso Sá

Gabriel Paquette calls on universities to meet 'aggressive' tax reforms with a 'forceful, evidence-informed response'

Focus on rankings risks neglecting the genuine quality improvements that could propel Indian institutions into the global league, says Amarnath Bose

Australia’s new impact assessment exercise recognises cultural, social and environmental impacts, but there is a danger that economic impact will override everything, says David Lloyd

Agnieszka Piotrowska looks at the past, present and possible future of Zimbabwe’s universities, following the resignation of Robert Mugabe

Australia’s higher education policy is adrift, and could learn a thing or two from the UK, say Julie Hare and Stephen Parker

Elizabeth Cannon on why Canada's HE sector still has some work to do to achieve true diversity, and how universities are approaching this problem

Isolation is the last thing Myanmar needs if it is to develop its higher education system and encourage critical thought, write Kyle Anderson and Kyaw Moe Tun

The apparent defeat of Australia’s latest attempt at higher education funding reform prolongs the agony for both universities and ministers, says Conor King