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Robbert Dijkgraaf's appointment to the Netherlands’ new government has got academics very excited, says Michèle Wera

With concerted efforts, the UK could attract far more than 600,000 international students to its shores, says James Pitman

Hong Kong University’s legally dubious dismantling of the monument to Tiananmen Square should provoke global outrage, says Phil C.W. Chan

Pushing the ARC to focus on commercialisation neglects the complex interdependency between basic and applied research, says Duncan Ivison

The pandemic may just push US colleges and universities to do what they should have done a long time ago: reorganise, says Michael Hadjiargyrou

Higher education looks to be beset by any number of challenges in 2022, not least more Covid disruption. Resilience may again be the year’s watchword

The pandemic has demonstrated that there are broad deficiencies in quantitative reasoning skills even within the academy, says David Sanders

Privileging one set of subjects with a catchy acronym may once have served a purpose, but that has long since been outlived, says Andy Miah 

Enlisting miscreants to help improve understanding of contract cheating, as part of their punishment, could be a way forward, says Kholah Yaruq Malik

UK higher education is in robust shape, but it must be willing to build multiple bridges in 2022, says David Bell

Despite the pandemic, trade disputes and geopolitical tensions, several factors will continue to push and pull Chinese students abroad, says Nicolas Chu

Higher education in continental Europe needs to overcome its prejudices about DBAs if it is to meet demand from today’s senior managers, says Michel Kalika

Networks such as Universitas 21 facilitate mutual support to meet net zero targets, say Tan Eng Chye and Anton Muscatelli

After a second year of social distancing, how strong are the ties that bind us together and what is it that makes us a community, in society and HE?

The escalating pressures of university life are resulting in all manner of exotic new psychological disorders. Adrian Furnham opens his casebook

Unclear guidelines, screen-tanned conspiracy theorists and government party animals: none of them is helping campus security, says George Bass

Funding for green campuses, levelling up and international links would be a gift from Santa Rishi Sunak to himself, too, says Nick Isles

UK higher education says it wants diversity, but its treatment of early career researchers suggests otherwise, says Edda Nicolson

The Taliban’s professed support for higher education has not been matched by their actions so far, says Rahmatullah Katawazai

Persuasion is everywhere, but universities could do a public service by communicating the messy, uncertain truth more widely, says Michael Blastland

They helped create the problems we face. Now business schools should be fundamentally reimagined as democratic institutions, says Carl Rhodes

Australian universities’ ongoing embrace of digital approaches is cheapening learning – but not in a good way, says Binoy Kampmark

The Florida governor’s control over the make-up of public universities’ boards makes recent controversies unsurprising, says Mei Lan Frame

The financial effects of Covid may cause disadvantaged college applicants to panic, unclear how to apply for aid or too ashamed to do so, says Amy Glynn

Emily Shuckburgh and Alyssa Gilbert, co-chairs of the COP26 Universities Network, draw the lessons from two years of collective effort

Deep cuts may be reversed, but the Brazilian president’s anti-science rhetoric will do lasting damage, says John Aubrey Douglass

As competition for international students grows more intense and complex, the traditional anglophone giants face a host of new challenges

Diversifying income stream also makes institutions less exposed to possible government cuts, say Ian Matthias and Mike Boxall

Studying institutional success stories is socially useful and has nothing to do with selling out, say Matthew Flinders and Paul ’t Hart

Scrutiny of graduate outcomes is appropriate but the issue is much more complex than arts v science, says Anna Vignoles

Mediocre but arrogant academics who appropriate successful projects are a threat to education and collegiality, says Manuel Freire-Garabal 

Negative connotations attached to ‘liberal’ and ‘arts’ have created a misleading perception of a transformative education model that delivers for students, say Barbara Altmann and Jeffrey Nesteruk

The effects of gentrification and displacement as neighbourhoods are transformed into vibrant hubs of creativity shouldn’t be ignored, says Costas Spirou

The silence of other universities about an apparent clampdown on lawful speech is a betrayal of their mission, says Jonathan Rosenhead

Amid another round of strikes, the pension scheme chair’s assertion that changes are unavoidable cannot stand unchallenged, says Neil Davies

Both dropout rates and attainment have held steady since Abertay radically reduced entry grades for disadvantaged applicants, says Nigel Seaton

The country’s conservative government is wary of academia’s social influence and values, but a ministerial letter offers hope, says Agnieszka Piotrowska

Both researchers and journalists should adopt a more agnostic lens when confronted with novel findings, says Anne-Laure Sellier

The UK’s whole-genome sequencing project could spark a global step change in the treatment of rare diseases, says Damian Smedley

More training, greater recognition and a wider geographical purview would help expand the reviewer pool, says Miriam Maus

The latest USS valuation may have been conducted amid crashing markets, but there is no escaping the need for changes, says Kate Barker

The abolition of publishers and the bypassing of Big Tech is a prerequisite for maximising the power of science, says Andy Farnell

High levels of personal optimism block decisions to depart a dysfunctional workplace or halt a failing project, say Alexander Clark and Bailey Sousa

A group of undergraduates who got together to build a racing car taught Nic Smith how much horsepower there is in community

Both industry and academia in New Zealand need people who can look past traditional subject boundaries, says Catherine Whitby

Inviting people to share their full selves on campus promotes mental health, diversity and intellectual stimulation, says Kyle Sebastian Vitale

Research that is neither rigorous nor insightful serves no one, say Stefan Stremersch, Nuno Camacho and Russell Winer

Meeting the Confucian approach halfway will protect student recruitment and might even stimulate a new politics of mutual benefit, says Paul Breen

Graduate networks are the perfect launch vehicle for systemic voluntary efforts to improve society, say Michael Madison and Martin Skladany

A major new survey underlines the value that students derived from flipped learning during the pandemic, says Harriet Dunbar-Morris

Other value frameworks, such as those implicit in indigenous knowledges, must be better heard, says Ronald Barnett

Erasmus funding rules should be rewritten to compensate students for the higher cost of travelling by rail, says Connie Hedegaard

The embrace of those values by the UAE’s higher education institutions has been key to the nation’s success, says Zaki Nusseibeh 

Shifting fields takes courage, but if a tenured professor can’t take the leap to address the ecological emergency, who can, asks Adam Aron

How can academics be free to speak out and enquire when the principles of robust open debate are under attack from without and within?

Quite apart from the injustice, institutions that fail to act on complaints undermine trust across entire disciplines, says Irina Dumitrescu

The crisis in peer reviewing can be overcome if journals and universities do more to incentivise it, say Dirk Lindebaum and Peter Jordan

Shrugging is not good enough. Victims must be supported to speak out – and conference organisers must act, says Kirsten England

Inequality, Covid exhaustion, sympathy for students, fear of public opinion and frustration with UCU tactics are all factors, says Glen O’Hara

Would a seventh European Court ruling against Rome really force a change in attitude, asks David Petrie