Higher Education: Safeguarding intellectual property rights and academic freedom
June 2024
June 2024
The High-Level Panel on the Teaching Profession was convened by the United Nations Secretary General and brought together academics, ministers of education and labour, former presidents, employers’ organisations, teachers and students and their unions.
This paper offers an overview on funding of higher and further education across the globe. Drawing on the best available comparative data, it shows how education is funded in different ways. It discusses, for example, how much different countries spend on higher education, how spending has changed over time, how...
Higher education (HE) faces a complex landscape of digital technology services, shaping educators’ labour and working conditions in new ways. Two particular issues are ownership of intellectual property (IP) and academic freedom when using digital education services such as edtech platforms. Edtech platforms complicate questions of academic ownership of content...
On May 6 Education International hosted the launch of the study Behind the platforms: Safeguarding intellectual property rights and academic freedom in higher education. The study focuses on potential threats to intellectual property ownership and academic freedom for higher education teachers and researchers caused by the use of edtech platforms.
Tommy Dalegaard Madsen is the Chairman of DM’s Sectoral Board for Vocational Colleges, Vocational Academies and Maritime Education. DM represents 75,000 academic professionals in Denmark, and it is the most representative trade union in further and higher education. In this interview for Worlds of Education, he shares his perspectives on...
Education Voices | Improving terms and conditions in higher education through collective bargaining in DenmarkThousands of people across Argentina rallied in defence of a fundamental pillar of their education system: public universities. Faced with a drastic budget cut of 70 percent and inflation of around 300 percent, the country’s public universities are in serious financial trouble.
Argentina marches for public educationDigital platforms are routinely used in universities to support teaching and learning, but they can also challenge academic freedom and intellectual property (IP) rights. In our new report for Education International, ‘Behind the platforms: Safeguarding intellectual property rights and academic freedom in Higher Education’ , we reviewed the landscape of...
Are edtech platforms threatening academic freedom and intellectual property rights?National President of the NTEU Alison Barnes was joined by President of Education International and former Secretary of the Australian Education Union Susan Hopgood, as well as Professor Julian Garritzmann, a political scientist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and Terri MacDonald from NTEU’s Policy and Research Unit. Topics on...
Higher education contributes over £70 billion to the United Kingdom's economy. However, despite this significant contribution, the current funding model relies heavily on student debt repayment over up to 40 years, often resulting in government losses.
Shifting the burden: How an employer levy could transform Higher Education financing in the UKHow does a lecturers’ union influence legislative change and restore the status of its members in a toxic, polarized, and polarising political environment? Through commitment, resilience and indomitable will. This article chronicles the unlikely victory of the College Lecturers Association of Zimbabwe (COLAZ) that saw the Government of Zimbabwe enact...
Against all odds: the union’s victory to elevate the status of college lecturers in ZimbabweFurther and higher education and research are human rights and the responsibility of the State. They require sustainable public funding to fulfill their public mission. This message was loud and clear as the Higher Education Caucus gathered on July 28 to address the pressing challenges confronting the sector.
Joining forces to protect Higher Education: A stand for democracy and rightsPublic education in Argentina is under threat from a political agenda that has made its way into the national government and aims to – in the words of President Javier Milei himself – “destroy the state from within”. Arguing that the state is a “criminal organisation” that attacks freedom (of...
The fight for public education and universities in present-day Argentina