Pact will help international students finish their studies amid Harvard’s legal battle with Trump administration
Harvard University and the University of Toronto and have announced a plan that would see some Harvard students complete their studies in Canada if visa restrictions prevent them from entering the United States.
The pact between the two schools reflects the tumultuous and “exceptional” politics of the postsecondary world during the second term of Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Inquiry concludes college’s management failed to help Jewish students ‘feel welcome and safe from antisemitism’
Goldsmiths College in London has apologised to Jewish students and staff after an independent inquiry found it had allowed a “culture” of antisemitism to build up on its campus over a number of years.
The inquiry concluded that Jewish students were subjected to antisemitism during their studies at Goldsmiths and that the college’s management failed to help Jewish students and potential applicants to “feel welcome, included and safe from antisemitism”.
Continue reading...Student Loans Company figures show 10% jump in a year as individuals increase borrowing to meet cost of living
Students in England are finishing their degrees with government loans averaging £53,000, a jump of 10% in a year, as they increase their borrowing to meet the rising cost of living.
The Student Loans Company (SLC) has released figures showing individual loan balances were £5,000 higher in 2024-25 than a year earlier, when the average in England was £48,270.
Continue reading...Office for Students guidance urges ‘very strong’ approach to permitting lawful speech on campus
Universities in England will no longer be able to enforce blanket bans on student protests under sweeping new guidance that urges a “very strong” approach to permitting lawful speech on campus.
The detailed regulations set out for the first time how universities should deal with inflammatory disputes, such as those between the University of Cambridge and students over the war in Gaza, and rows over academics who hold controversial but legal opinions, such as the gender-critical professor Kathleen Stock.
The guidance issued by the Office for Students (OfS) will make it harder for universities to penalise students and staff for anything other than unlawful speech or harassment.
Academics should not be pressed to support particular views.
Protests should not be restricted for supporting legal viewpoints.
Students or staff should not be “encouraged to report others” for lawful speech.
Universities must “secure freedom of speech” for visiting speakers.
Continue reading...Macquarie blames prospect of international student caps and ‘uncertainty’ about domestic student numbers for proposed academic job cuts, fewer arts courses
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Academics have accused Macquarie University of “hollowing out” the humanities after the institution announced a restructure that would halve some arts faculties and drastically reduce course offerings for some degrees.
Under the proposed changes, seen by Guardian Australia, 42 full-time equivalent academic roles in the faculty of arts and 33 in the faculty of science and engineering would be cut, making about $15m in net savings. Curriculum changes would be made in 2026 and 2027, with mergers and reductions largely attributed to low enrolment figures.
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Continue reading...Students say rise in prices was trigger but underlying anger was communist government’s increasing reliance on USD
Having endured electricity blackouts, water shortages, transport failures and the spiralling cost of food, Cuba’s students appear to have finally lost patience with their government over a ferocious price hike for the country’s faltering internet.
Local chapters of Cuba’s Federation of University Students (FEU) have been calling for a slew of measures, including attendance strikes, explanations from ministers and even the resignation of their own organisation’s president.
Continue reading...Suspension comes as 13m students take four-day gaokao tests for limited spots at country’s universities
Big Chinese tech companies appear to have turned off some AI functions to prevent cheating during the country’s highly competitive university entrance exams.
More than 13.3 million students are sitting the four-day gaokao exams, which began on Saturday and determine if and where students can secure a limited place at university.
Continue reading...Across the US, hundreds of thousands of Chinese students are now uncertain about their academic future and some are considering moving away
Chinese students in the United States are questioning their future in the country after the state department announced last week that it would “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students and enhance scrutiny of future applications from China and Hong Kong.
Chinese students hoping to study at Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university, are under particular pressure after the Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it was banning the school from enrolling new foreign students. The presidential proclamation cited Harvard’s links with China as a particular cause for concern.
Continue reading...If the US’s oldest university bends the knee, the door to authoritarianism opens and democracy fades, experts warn
In mortarboards and crimson-fringed gowns, thousands of students were joined by smiling families for the centuries-old ritual of graduation day. But this year was different.
Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, received a standing ovation and welcomed graduates “from down the street, across the country and around the world”, drawing applause for the last words: “Around the world – just as it should be.”
Continue reading...Trump administration’s effort to ban foreign enrolment could force students to disrupt their studies and careers
British and international students at Harvard report “growing anxiety” over their fate, as the Trump administration’s latest attack on the university could force them to disrupt their studies and careers.
On Thursday, the administration said it would revoke Harvard University’s eligibility to enrol international students, which was later temporarily frozen by a US federal judge on Friday.
Continue reading...Uinversity students’ mental health and wellbeing must be ‘prioritised alongside their studies’, argue campaigners
A review of student suicides in England dodged “the real issues” with universities, the parents of a student who killed herself before a class presentation have said.
The national review of higher education student suicide deaths, commissioned by the Department for Education, heard that families suffered “distressing experiences” at the hands of university administrators, and concluded that universities owed a “duty of candour” to relatives, including greater transparency and involvement.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...As universities begin to push back on Trump’s policies, those in Republican-led states face multiple threats
Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.
As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.
Continue reading...Applicants will be targeted by Home Office due to suspicions they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum
Nigerians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans applying to work or study in the UK face Home Office restrictions over suspicions that they are most likely to overstay and claim asylum, Whitehall officials have claimed.
The government is working with the National Crime Agency to build models to profile applicants from these countries who are likely to go on to claim asylum.
Continue reading...Delegation visits jails where Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk are being held and denounce ‘authoritarian’ Trump
Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.
“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”
Continue reading...Study shows women today are happier being women – but getting up to go to work remains as punishing as ever
The mundane tasks of everyday life, such as homework after school and household chores at the weekend, may not have changed in the past 80 years, but societal attitudes towards them could not be more different.
A study by the Policy Institute at King’s College London (KCL), comparing public attitudes now and in the 1930s and 40s, reveals how significantly views on everyday life in Britain have shifted over the decades.
Continue reading...Probably illegal move against US’s richest university is latest in Trump’s attack on independence of higher education
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status in what would be a probably illegal move amid Donald Trump’s concerted attack on the independence of US institutions of higher education.
Trump on Tuesday called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.
Continue reading...UBC and others report spike in interest from US citizens as Trump withholds funds and revokes foreign student visas
More students living in the United States are applying to Canadian universities or expressing interest in studying north of the border as Donald Trump cuts federal funding to universities and revokes foreign student visas.
Officials at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Vancouver campus said the school reported a 27% jump in graduate applications as of 1 March from US citizens for programs starting in the 2025 academic year, compared with all of 2024.
Continue reading...Harvard faces funding freeze as Yale faculty asks leadership ‘to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands’
Barack Obama has come out in support of Harvard after the Trump administration elected to cut $2bn of its federal grants after the Ivy League school in Massachusetts rejected what it said was an attempt at “government regulation” of the university.
Meanwhile, faculty at Yale University – another prominent Ivy League institution – has asked its leadership “to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and … self-governance”.
Continue reading...It may be a turning point in the White House’s attempt to gut allegedly liberal universities and punish law firms
It might come to be seen as the moment the “woke liberal empire” of Donald Trump’s most fevered imaginings struck back.
Harvard University, the world-renowned institution emblematic of the elitism that Trump and his coterie hold in contempt, received an extortive demand from the administration that it surrender the core of its academic freedoms – and promptly told it to get lost.
Continue reading...Education department says $2.3bn in funds to be frozen after university rejects slew of demands as political ploy
The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.
The announcement comes as the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
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