Australia’s prime minister has defended a clampdown on “Mickey Mouse courses” that he says enabled non-genuine students to remain in the country under the previous government and stated that annual immigration figures will be halved to 250,000 in the 2024/25 financial year. Speaking on 3AW radio on April 19, Anthony Albanese said that by the end of the next financial year, his government is “determined” to cut immigration, after inheriting a system “that was a mess”. “What we’ve been doing is making sure that in areas such as vocational education, for example, some peo ..read more

A UK-based employability services and university placement provider has partnered with the University of Surrey to provide industry placements for pharmaceutical sciences students. Twin Group will see its employability and placement expertise embedded into the University of Surrey’s School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering curriculum, with a focus on career-readiness. “Surrey is renowned for the high quality of its graduates and has won awards for the employability of its students. This ‘Surrey Advantage’ will be further enhanced by our partnership with T ..read more

The city of Porto in northern Portugal has been named as the Erasmus Destination of the Year by a leading international student organisation. The Erasmus Destination of the Year award is given to a city’s Erasmus Student Network that is seen giving exceptional efforts in supporting student mobility at the “city level”. A testament to the “members of the Erasmus generation”, the award plays a role in striving for the organisation to provide more and better European mobility programs. “The Erasmus Destination of the Year is more than just another initiative or competition. It is proof that stude ..read more

Caitlin Clark; Zach Edey; Paige Bueckers; Dalton Knecht; Kamilla Cardoso; Nika Mühl. If you’re in the US, or just an avid basketball fan, these are names that might have appeared in the sports section you read in the morning – at least in the month of March and early April. They’re some of the best players from both the women’s and men’s National Collegiate Athletics Association March Madness tournament – and half of them are international students. Students from overseas have been gracing American television sets for multiple years in various sports. They appear in basketball, American footba ..read more

Disappointed but not surprised – that was the reaction of many to the UK government’s rejection of a youth mobility scheme between the UK and EU. On April 18, the European Commission proposed to the Council to open negotiations with the UK on an agreement to facilitate youth mobility with the aim of making easier for young EU and UK citizens to study, work and live in the UK and the EU respectively. “The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union has hit young people in the EU and the UK who would like to study, work and live abroad particularly hard,” said Maroš Šefčovič, executive vice-pre ..read more

A burgeoning alliance of European universities is aiming to help nine regional universities across the continent to drive “open innovation” and improve their “global visibility”, members have said. The COLOURS Alliance – “COLlaborative innovative sUstainable Regional univerSities” – had its official launch meeting in late March at Paderborn University in Germany, one of the founding members and where the Alliance’s staff are also based. “Widely spread across Europe, all members of the COLOURS Alliance are universities with a self-proclaimed identity as regional drivers of innovation, expressed ..read more

The US is the preferred country for Indian students in which to study over the UK, Canada and Australia, a survey has suggested. Some 69% of Indian students who responded to the survey said the US was a preferred destination, with 54% saying the UK and 43% Canada. Some 405 prospective undergraduate and postgraduate students from India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam were surveyed for the report, as well as 97 current OIEG pathway program students. Australia was the least popular of the big four destinations, with just 27% of the Indian students surveyed saying they would consider the destinatio ..read more

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Birmingham in the UK have announced a tripling of their investment in their partnership to develop new signature research collaborations. The investment increase includes US$400,000 to establish strategic research partnerships with the global South, focusing on global health, sustainability and education access and equity. The BRIDGE Alliance – which stands for the Birmingham-Illinois partnership for discovery, engagement and education – already boasts some 115 collaborative projects tackling major global challenges and is celeb ..read more

England’s further education sector could make a greater contribution to UK education exports if data collection on internationalisation activities in colleges were improved, the leading voice for colleges in the country has suggested. The Association of Colleges has recommended that support for colleges to export and innovate must be increased and student visa policy be reviewed. “The export potential of the UK’s skills sector – and the central role of colleges – must be given more government support to boost capability and capacity,” the report reads. It emphasises th ..read more

Japanese PM Fumio Kishida has visited a Japanese branch campus inside a North Carolina university as part of his landmark trip to the US. He met students and faculty at the Nagoya University Global Campus, which is situated inside North Carolina State University’s grounds. NC State said the visit on April 12 marked the first from any foreign head of government in almost 70 years. Speaking about his decision to go to North Carolina during his trip, Kishida said he wanted to “show the Japan-US partnership extends beyond Washington”. His visit to the “Tar Heel” State came after it was announced t ..read more