Finance

Despite Auckland’s lockdown, the country’s handling of Covid-19 is increasing its attractiveness to students, says Roger Smyth

Higher education is no panacea, but critical thinking is the best antidote to inequality, say Chris Cunningham and Colin Samson

Two years ago, universities claimed to be selling the student experience. So where are our lockdown refunds, asks Maria Magdalena Gajewska

A string of anti-immigration moves has already made the US significantly less attractive to international students, says Rajika Bhandari

Legal challenges may succeed, but US universities must plan how to maintain physical classes come what may to avoid mass deportations, says Brian Wong

If universities don’t commit to underwriting a riskier investment strategy, pension contributions will have to rise sharply, says Bill Galvin

The government and universities are not doing enough to protect their students from the effects of the lockdown, says Futao Huang

Selling income-contingent stakes in the future earnings of graduates is the best way to address the student debt crisis, says Paul Oslington

Despite a government loan scheme, unions say students have no choice but to drop out in order to claim unemployment benefit

Nations are increasingly making conscious efforts to propel a subset of their universities into the global elite. But are such aspirations ever met? And, if they are, is that a blessing or a curse for those institutions denied entry to the club? Simon Baker examines the issues and the numbers

Universities’ divestment policies are undermined by the USS’ continued investment in oil companies, says Bill Spence 

A plan to put foreign students in supervised quarantine before studying could rescue international programmes, says Roger Smyth

Making findings open source may enable certain companies and countries to corner the vaccine market, warn Virginia Driver and Tom Woodhouse

£7,500 fees are off the agenda, but Covid-19 only increases the need to align state subsidies with economic need, says Philip Augar

England’s main skills challenge is not over-education but preparing workers for the emerging economy, says Tim Blackman 

Balancing the potential of remote learning with the benefits of student mobility for skills will be crucial, say Barbara Lorber and Sabine Prem

Video conferencing is a reasonable substitute for lectures, but that is where it must end, say Robert Zaretsky and George Alliger

A 2017 speech by Emmanuel Macron on European identity has led to the creation of an initial 17 pan-continental consortia involving 114 universities. But do they amount to anything more than yet more vacuous memoranda of understanding? David Matthews reports

Tomorrow’s world often turns out to be less radically different than we might have first thought, says Bruce Macfarlane

The lockdown is affecting not only final-year students. Without a blanket funding extension, many others will suffer and drop out, says Ross Goldstone

University finances are supposedly staring into the abyss – but we shouldn’t get giddy, says Paul Jump

Members of the Universities Superannuation Scheme are about to vote on whether to lock in current members. But this might not be enough to safeguard the scheme’s solvency, says Bernard Casey

To stop economic destruction, we need to refocus vast resources from other productive activity – a truly grand prize might do the trick, says Chris Callaghan

The namesake cities in the US and UK are both home to internationally renowned universities whose industry collaborations are proving highly successful. But while that is good news for national economies, where does it leave the locals priced out of their own neighbourhoods? Paul Basken and John Morgan report

‘Levelling up’ research spending may imperil regional universities’ sustainability, warn Grace Gottlieb and Graeme Reid 

Slightly higher fees would be a reasonable price for a system that responds to student numbers and preferences, says Andrew Norton 

Employers value higher and degree apprenticeships. Restricting access to them would be counterproductive, says Jane Longmore

Augar’s questions remain largely unanswered but proposals for further education are largely comprehensive and coherent, says Nick Hillman

Ongoing falls in Australian postgraduate recruitment suggest a trend away from structured education for people in mid-career, says Andrew Norton

Political, economic and demographic considerations all suggest that the demand-driven system won’t endure, says Nick Hillman

Critics fear initiative could widen social inequalities

International student recruitment in sub-Saharan Africa is a long game prone to political disruption, says Anna Esaki-Smith

£9,000 fees permitted per-student funding to rise even at the height of austerity, argues former minister David Willetts

The competition among 20 Georgian institutions for international medical students raises a host of quality concerns, says Michèle Wera

As mistrust between the EU and UK deepens, politics could scupper British association to the next framework programme, says Jan Palmowksi

While some universities are funding huge building projects out of international student fees, an increasing number in Australia and elsewhere are finding that the ground beneath their feet is the best foundation for reaching to the sky. But should universities really be swapping ivory towers for commercial skyscrapers? John Ross cranes his neck and wonders 

Universities must improve their career development support for professional and support staff, says Alex Holmes

Bureaucracy is the bane of every academic’s life. But who is to blame for its proliferation – and how can it be kept in check? Six academics have their say – while a registrar offers an equal and opposite reaction 

The volatility of current affairs means that the old certainties about how to identify receptive markets are gone, says Anna Esaki-Smith

Universities should offer a safety net for recent graduates forced into menial work by financial circumstances, says Roy Celaire

Spaces can energise or demotivate. Using them to nurture well-being should be seen as an investment not a cost, says Derek Clements-Croome

History suggests that universities will lure students with the chance to repay fees via post-graduation work, says Peter Brady

A cross-continental push to improve Europe’s best universities will make them more globally competitive, says Jan Palmowski

One in 12 students now pays to go private in Germany, attracted by ‘niche’ courses, smaller classes and flexible learning schedules

International students want to know that they are studying in a country that can set them up for a successful career, says Seema Kennedy

Continuous retraining is widely seen as the answer to the coming job losses caused by automation and artificial intelligence. But are universities the best places to provide it? And are their courses, structures and funding systems optimised to do so? Anna McKie reports

Tuition comprises less than half the cost of attending US universities, but taxpayers may be unwilling to cover it, says Anthony P. Carnevale

Business and management schools are highly successful in financial terms, and provide valuable income to their wider universities. But opinion remains sharply divided on how successful they have been intellectually. Here, five business academics give their views on whether their discipline has done enough to earn the respect of the academy and wider society

More must be done to understand and help students who register for courses but then fade into the ether, says Bret Stephenson

Asking people to prepare for a 10-week course that might not run is too much, says an anonymous early career academic

University of Alaska cuts are just the latest example of what is probably the new normal in US political culture, says Ben Trachtenberg

The well-known economic and social benefits of higher education have been tossed aside for short-term political gain, says Steven Brint 

The next EU commissioner for research and innovation must fight for the Horizon Europe budget but resist timetables for scientific delivery, says Jan Palmowski

Review chair’s comments on ‘discretionary’ funding raise disturbing questions, say Mark E. Smith, Sarah Randall-Paley and Andrew McConnell

Means-tested fees discounts would remove the rationale for fruitless widening participation efforts, argues Norman Gowar

Corruption, poverty and inequality can’t be tackled by weakening the state and driving academics abroad, says Mark Aspinwall

Augar’s failure to grasp the differential effect of government policy on different kinds of universities is his report’s Achilles heel, says Greg Walker

Overseas branch campuses have mushroomed in the past two decades, but with the risks larger than initially assumed and the returns less certain, stories of abandoned ventures have begun to mount. Ellie Bothwell asks whether the model still has a future 

Asking for higher contributions is painful but unavoidable in such uncertain times, says USS chair Sir David Eastwood

Raising UK outlay to international levels will reap rich technological, social and political rewards for the next Conservative Party leader, says Sarah Main