Search Page

Tanzania has suspended student loans amounting to TZS3.2 billion (US$1.5 million) affecting over 2,000 students, some of whom are believed to be non-existent as they failed to show up during a verification exercise. Media reports said the two-month-long exercise carried out twice was to confirm that the students who were benefiting through the Tanzania’s Higher Education Students’ Loans Board, or HESLB, at various institutions of higher learning actually existed and were legitimate students.

Freshmen to universities with financial autonomy have called on the universities to publicise tuition fees so that they and their families can manage the sum actively. A local newspaper on Friday reported that some universities “forget” to publicise tuition fees, which made students and their families confused and worried about transparency at the universities. In the middle of last month, second-year students at the National Economics University were shocked when the university announced a 30 per cent increase in tuition fees in the coming academic year.

The Chinese government is buying influence over Australian universities by donating libraries and funds for institutes as part of a broader push to strengthen its soft power in the country, two Australian journalists have argued. The debate in Australia echoes concerns in the US, where the Chinese government has been accused of seeking to exert control over the academy by funding Confucius Institutes on university campuses.

University officials at Hong Kong Polytechnic University – a publicly funded institution – have been scrambling to explain its use of companies registered in secretive offshore tax havens, after revelations in the Panama Papers that it set up two companies offshore to channel funds. The university, known locally as PolyU, had not declared in any of its financial reports that it set up two companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2012 and 2013 as wholly owned subsidiaries of the university, raising questions about its financial transparency and reporting.

The independence of Swiss universities from the corporate world has again been called into question as details of pharmaceutical sponsorship deals were broadcast by Swiss public television, SRF. The programme found evidence that one firm may have manipulated academic research data. SRF research shows financial links between pharma giants and several leading universities. The most damning revelation is that one group demanded to see research every three months and reserved the right to make “acceptable alterations” to results.