Global Edition

Dorothy Lepkowska

A new generation of higher education institutions in England are ‘disrupting traditional norms’, emphasising practical, real-world relevance and offering new modes of delivery that could serve as inspiration to traditional institutions. But they also face recruitment challenges and regulatory hurdles, according to a new report.

‘The capacities universities exist to cultivate will erode’

James Yoonil Auh

Universities risk ceding to AI their authority to define what counts as knowledge, judgement and learning. As AI evolves faster than institutional understanding, efficiency displaces reflection and convenience masquerades as progress. This threatens institutions whose legitimacy rests on their capacity for critical judgement.

Shuriah Niazi

India’s aim of reaching a gross enrolment ratio of 50% by 2035 comes with demands for massive expansion of academic infrastructure, while trends in outbound student mobility and the emergence of foreign university campuses reveal shifting student preferences, according to two new reports.

Wagdy Sawahel

To contribute to climate justice efforts, ecological accountability must be embedded in AI governance, a Brazilian study has found. Big Tech’s use of algorithmic systems discourses obscures the material, energetic and extractive dimensions of digital infrastructures, reinforcing environmental injustices.

Dustin T Duncan

The introduction of Writing Accountability Groups is a strategic response to the need for faculty empowerment during turbulent times. Forward-thinking university leaders should view the groups not only as productivity interventions, but as strategies that democratise access to mentorship and institutional belonging.

Anu Lainio and Anna Sofia Salonen

The ability to envision alternatives is integral to democratic life and is all the more important given reports of young people’s reduced hope for the future and the global challenges we face. Cultivating political imagination should be part of higher education’s democratic mission.

Simon Marginson

The Western-dominated era, in general and in higher education, is passing. If we are not to fragment into warring cultures controlled by corporate overlords, the denizens of ‘end times fascism’ and survivalist capitalism, what will be the content of the next tending-to-universal knowledge?