Breaking News
GLOBAL
Brendan O’Malley
Are universities just for the students who get through the door and the academics who work in them, or are they for society as a whole, including those who may never set foot inside them? And how should they demonstrate their wider value to
Breaking News
GLOBAL
Brendan O’Malley
Are universities just for the students who get through the door and the academics who work in them, or are they for society as a whole, including those who may never set foot inside them? And how should they demonstrate their wider value to everyone?
MIDDLE EAST-NORTH AFRICA
Tarek Abd Elgalil
UNITED KINGDOM
Brendan O’Malley
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Wagdy Sawahel
Top Stories
GLOBAL
US, UK, Canada, Australia reap the most benefits
Nathan M Greenfield
The 41% of international students who remain in the country of study after graduating will generate an eye-watering US$1.7 trillion over their lifetime, of which US$1 trillion will be generated in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia alone, according to a new Studyportals report.
GLOBAL
Min Bahadur Bista
INDIA
Shuriah Niazi
GLOBAL
Desmond Thompson
News
CHINA
Amber M Wang
Chinese universities are becoming more successful at attracting established scientists from overseas, with recent appointments of Nobel Prize winners highlighting China’s growing appeal as a top research destination. But questions remain over whether international academics can be retained and supported for their long-term careers.
SPAIN
Paul Rigg
Spain’s government has announced investment in 2,000 new student housing places as a deepening housing crisis fuels public anger, student insecurity and political upheaval. The funding will be focused on affordable rooms in shared houses with communal facilities, rather than halls of residence.
UNITED KINGDOM
Nic Mitchell
The pace of closures and restructurings for modern language programmes across universities in the United Kingdom is quickening, so what can be done to save them in the age of AI and Google Translate? Some UK universities are finding new ways to strengthen the languages pipeline and take-up.
NETHERLANDS
Jan Petter Myklebust
On 14 October 2026 the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences published two advisory reports that call for the constitutional protection of academic freedom, a stronger statutory framework and a strengthening of the Higher Education and Scientific Research Act.
Edtech, AI and Higher Education
GLOBAL
James Yoonil Ugh
AI has made progress in representing gender, race and cultural diversity. But who controls the technological infrastructure, knowledge systems and governance structures underpinning AI and what does this mean for universities, especially regarding intellectual independence, academic practices and participation in shaping AI governance?
World Blog
UNITED STATES
Harvey Charles and Anthony C Ogden
It is right to challenge international officers to defend the values of higher education better. But United States institutions must ask whether they have created leadership roles that are capable of doing so and whether they have designed the role in ways that limit its influence.
How can international higher education protect scholars at risk without weakening the academic ecosystems to which they belong? Ukraine shows programmes that protect scholars at risk may weaken home academic systems if they support individuals without sustaining the institutions, teams and professional relationships.
AFRICA
Kwadwo Appiagyei-Revealed
Who is responsible when academic freedom collapses? All actors share responsibility: university management through complicity with state control, academics, and students. But management has the power to change the system and to restore students from the periphery to the core of academic freedom.
GLOBAL-AFRICA
Stuart Gordon
Data belongs in a qualitative humanitarian studies curriculum. Amid international development and humanitarian emergencies, it helps students see how humanitarian evidence is made, helps sharpen causal arguments, and helps challenge claims that arrive with the authority of numbers. It also shapes which decisions can be justified.
Top Stories from the Last Edition
AFRICA
Felicia Nkrumah Kuagbedzi and Rosalie Lack
Open Access Week 2026 turns a spotlight on a question that is urgent for African higher education: who pays for the infrastructure that makes knowledge open? This is important, as institutions may commit to open science principles before they have secured the infrastructure to sustain them.
GLOBAL
Nathan M Greenfield
UNITED KINGDOM-EUROPE
Nic Mitchell
PALESTINE
Hazem Shehada
GLOBAL
Angel Calderon, Hans de Wit, Ellen Hazelkorn and Hamish Coates
The current funding difficulties facing universities are the result of a focus on piecemeal funding mechanisms that have become increasingly unsustainable without a coherent vision for the future, which embraces the whole tertiary education landscape and emphasises both private and public benefits.
GLOBAL
Cameron Mirza
Universities have long managed admissions, student support and alumni relations as disconnected functions, with separate data, tools and priorities. AI can connect and transform these operations, empowering institutions to understand and better support the entire student journey while preserving human relationships.
CHINA
Futao Huang
China’s recently announced reform relating to institutional classification will not broaden the concept of higher education success on its own. Social change takes longer and the reform needs to be flexible enough to address a problem that expansion alone cannot solve: anticipating change.
GLOBAL
Tarek Abd Elgalil
While many AI debates focus on academic integrity, a WISE-IIE study across seven countries revealed a broader challenge: universities are at vastly different stages of AI readiness. These differences threaten to create new inequalities in how effectively universities can adopt and govern AI technologies.
Pleskmedia Media Is a Global News Platform Covering the Latest Developments and Breaking Stories from Around The World, Including World News, Business, Finance, Technology, Health, Politics, Science, Entertainment, Sports, and More.
