Welcome to The Fifteen, a global round-up of the stories animating higher education institutions and systems around the globe. Let’s get to it.
- Argentina’s Congress has overturned President Milei’s veto of the new law on university financing. In theory, that means a huge increase in university funding. In reality, a new economic collapse is starting to look increasingly likely, which might make fulfilling the law difficult.
- Lots going on in Australia: a Senate Committee has weighed in on the state of governance in Australian universities, a new strategic research review is underway (and look, they have discussion papers and everything, so anti-Canadian), and former Labor leader/current University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten has come up with some ideas for overhauling the country’s higher ed sector (a mix of sensible stuff and wishful thinking, if you ask me) and the University of Technology, Sydney is cutting…hold on to your hat…1100 programs in order to regain financial balance.
- The humanities are on a roll. In Belarus, the humanities are so feared that the country has just declared the European Humanities University – which left the country and set up in neighbouring Lithuania about 20 years ago – an “extremist organization”. And in South Korea, new humanities enrolments are up strongly.
- Canada has long shared a medical accreditation system with its neighbour to the south. But Trump-inspired changes de-emphasized equity, diversity, and inclusion. Result? Canada is going it alone on Medical Accreditation.
- With elections coming in the next few weeks/months, here are manifesto analyses for various parties in the Netherlands and Costa Rica. Marvel at how some issues echo around the world.
- Less than 9% of Ethiopian secondary graduates managed to pass the national high school exam. Cue an enormous amount of handwringing.
- Beyond the financial crisis in Kenyan universities (see almost every previous Fifteen this year), it turns out that the government is in arrears paying academic faculty (it is fairly common in Africa for academic salaries to be paid directly by government rather than by universities) and as a result they have now gone on strike. Universities there have now been closed for over a week.
- There’s a row brewing in Belgium as the French part of the country wrestles with very significant budget deficits and the government of Wallonie-Bruxelles has identified higher education as a place to cut: in particular, by eliminating subsidies for students who take too long to graduate and rationalization of program offerings. This is not going over well.
- In Nigeria, “cultism” on campuses has nothing to do with religious rituals, but rather with organized crime (cult = gang, basically). At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka the head of the student union and several others have been suspended for cultism, threats to life, and gross misconduct.
- In Peru, the President is not keen on opening new universities while money is short. Congress just told him to go pound sand, passing legislation authorizing 22 new universities across the country.
- This month, Russian embassies around the world have been advertising scholarships for local students who wish to study in Russia. Here are examples from Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. It might be a hard sell, as a number of Africa governments are warning that they have evidence Russia is using such scams to enrol unsuspecting young people into the Russian Army.
- In Ukraine, half of all university places are going unfilled, suggesting the sector is headed for major consolidation in the post-war period. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Minister of Higher Education told 2025 high-school matriculants that there were nowhere near enough places available for all of them in university and they should prepare some (non-university) back-up plans.
- Long, sad, but very good article from a recently-emigrated Venezuelan professor on the challenges of teaching in that country – particularly on salaries of under $3/month.
- Trump lost in court to both Harvard and UCLA, leading some to breathe a sigh of relieve. However, last week the government decided it would slap a $100,000 charge on every new H1B application. As usual with Trump details are unclear, but if the new scheme applies to universities, it would pretty much devastate any attempt by universities to hire foreign professors. Expect major changes in global academic flows.
- Are any of those European “let’s poach global talent” schemes enacted in the wake of last winter’s vandalism of the US science system bearing fruit? In a limited way, yes. Lund University is reporting that it has received over 1300 applications for its global recruitment program though about 20% of those were for a single joint position in Theology and Humanities. Meanwhile, 25 American professors have been recruited for a two-year stint with offers of half a million euros each.
And just for this once, I will add a sixteenth: the IgNobel prize was awarded this week, to a scholar from Bath University in England, for a piece of research showing that small amounts of alcohol can improve your pronunciation of a foreign language. I’ll drink to that.