Editor’s note: This guest entry, also available on Inside Higher Ed, has been kindly contributed by Professor Dato’ Dr Morshidi Sirat. Morshidi was the former Director-General of Higher Education Malaysia, and is now Director of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Facility (CTEF) based at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. Morshidi is also a Senior Research Fellow at the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN), Universiti Sains Malaysia. Given Morshidi’s expertise and experience in higher education policy, he is often engaged in consultancy work on higher education policy in Malay ..read more

Note: this entry is also available via Inside Higher Ed here. ~~~~~~ Over the last several years, it has been interesting to see the development of some new and relatively deep collaborative models of institutional (or ‘commercial,’ using GATS parlance) presence in territories outside of universities’ main campuses. These new models tend to be research- and graduate or professional education-oriented, with relatively strong interdisciplinary inclinations. Some examples include: Cornell Tech in New York City (a Cornell University/Technion – Israeli Institute of Technology joint venture) Global ..read more

Editor’s note: this guest entry, also posted on Inside Higher Ed, has been kindly developed by Sejal Parmar, Assistant Professor at the Department of Legal Studies and a core faculty member of the Center for Media, Data and Society at the School of Public Policy at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. The photographs are (c) Daniel Vegel, Zoltan Tuba / CEU. Dr. Parmar was previously Senior Legal Officer at ARTICLE 19. She has also been a postdoctoral fellow at New York University Law School and a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. Her main field o ..read more

Please note that an edited version of this is available on Inside Higher Ed – this version is more easily shared and printed, if so desired. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ As has been reported widely, including in Inside Higher Ed, Central European University (CEU) (registered officially under the names Central European University and Közép-európai Egyetem, KEE) is facing some major challenges regarding its future existence. The 4 April 2017 legislative move by the government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was widely condemned by CEU, as well as by numerous parties across Europe and North America. As the Eu ..read more

This entry is also available via Inside Higher Ed in a format more amenable for sharing or printing. ~~~~~~~~~~ Post-EU Referendum turmoil in the UK (and the EU) continues, for all sorts of reasons, but soon more serious and sustained assessment of the post-Brexit landscape for UK universities will occur. This blog entry is an exercise in thinking future-forward, brainstorming-fashion (so all caveats apply!), about one possible risk-reducing option. In such a context here is the question to consider: is an Oxbridge-Lille (a joint Cambridge-Oxford university) or equivalent (e.g., Imperial Colle ..read more

This entry is also available in Insider Higher Ed. ~~~~~~ As I outlined back on 9 August 2015 in Inside Higher Ed, the unexpected leadership transition at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in summer 2015 had all the ingredients to become a major crisis. And a ‘barn-burner’ of a crisis has certainly emerged, sad to say. As a concerned alum, I do hope my alma mater can move forward. From my perspective, nearly seven months later (amid a possible vote of non-confidence in the Board of Governors and an ongoing presidential search) it’s worth flagging two key problems, and then three correct ..read more

This entry is also available at Inside Higher Ed. ~~~~~~~~~ What are the implications for universities and their governing boards/trustees/councils of becoming increasingly embedded in global networks? There are many implications, including the ability to be interconnected with flows of knowledgeable people (aka human capital), ideas, money, technologies, and so on. These global networks also ensure that international collaborative research and co-authorship occurs, a phenomenon explored on a number of levels in these fascinating reports: UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030 OECD Science, Tech ..read more

This entry is available via Inside Higher Ed as well. ~~~~~~~~~ 2015 is surely one of the most momentous years in a long time regarding debates about tenure, academic freedom, the Wisconsin Idea, budget cuts, etc. Yesterday’s balanced article (‘Tenure or Bust‘) by Colleen Flaherty, in Inside Higher Ed, is but the latest of a series of nuanced pieces Ms. Flaherty has produced this year about the unfolding of higher education debates in this Midwest U.S. state of 5.75 million people. While I’m immersed in the tumult as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I can’t help standin ..read more

This entry is available at Inside Higher Ed as well. ~~~~~~ In the context of some intense debates about tenure in the University of Wisconsin System, and at UW-Madison, I’ve been acquiring some interesting information and views about tenure and related governance matters in Canada vs Wisconsin. Reflections and data have been kindly provided by Canadian leaders representing faculty and university administrative bodies, both nationally and in select universities. Why focus on this issue in comparative perspective? First, leading Canadian universities (UBC, Toronto, Waterloo, McGill) have been p ..read more

Editor’s note: this guest entry has been kindly developed by Gisèle Yasmeen, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Yasmeen raises a series of important issues in the build-up to a call for a “structured dialogue” on the nature and role of knowledge in society. ~~~~~ Innovative and Engaging Communications in and Beyond the Academy Gisèle Yasmeen, University of British Columbia Research and scholarship is primarily about asking and answering questions as well as conserving and constantly reinterpreting fragile and easily forgotten knowledg ..read more