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Two students and an educator from India were on Thursday announced among 15 finalists from across the globe competing for the World Education Medals 2025.

The five shortlisted include Raul John Aju, a 16-year-old student from Kerala and founder of AIrealm Technologies Pvt Ltd, and Ashwat Prasanna, a Bengaluru student and founder of EyeSight in the "Students" category.

Vineeta Garg, head of IT at a Delhi school, is one of five finalists for the World Education Medal in the "Educators" category.

"With changemakers such as Raul John Aju, Ashwat Prasanna, and Vineeta Garg, I am sure we are moving in the right direction for the future," said Mayank Dhingra, Director and Global Head of Education Business and Strategy at HP - the IT company behind the medals.

"Their innovative work is a shining beacon of what is to come for education, as it must transform in order to meet the future needs of generations to come," he said. The World Education Medals were founded by HP to shine a light on groundbreaking work by innovators harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to transform education and close the learning gap.

It celebrates achievers around the globe across three categories of Leaders, Educators, and Students, for demonstrating impact, leadership, and advocacy in using AI for social good.

"Research, including our own 'HP Futures 2025' report, shows the benefits of AI to close learning gaps and deliver equitable education, but only when deployed ethically and effectively," said Dhingra.

Raul has been selected for his signature venture, ThinkCraft Academy, that works towards democratizing AI education from rural schools to global universities.

His co-finalist, Ashwat, has been nominated for his work on making the learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics accessible to visually impaired students.

Vineeta's selection in the Educator category is a result of EmpowerED with AI-an initiative developing multilingual AI resources, accessible tools and gamified learning platforms that enable students and teachers to understand, use and create with AI. Others shortlisted for this year's medals come from the US, the UAE and Philippines as well as Switzerland, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Italy and Greece. The winner of each of the three medals, selected from among the finalists by a Global Judging Academy comprising prominent individuals, will be announced next month and recognised at the Education Leaders Forum in London.

Meanwhile, universities and research institutions are competing for academic talent on every continent. At the same time, higher education systems have generally become more dynamic and uncertain, with a number of established institutions facing increased pressures as a result of geopolitical and structural shifts.

While recruitment remains vital to institutional success, it is no longer sufficient unto itself. In today’s interconnected, fast-changing research environment, excellence needs to be cultivated, not just acquired.

Globally competitive universities need to develop an internal capacity for fostering talent, a vibrant research culture, and continuous renewal. This is their main strategic shift: away from vacancy filling to long-term strategies for academic vitality.

Proactive recruitment

The search for the best researchers is now a global hunt: institutions are investing heavily in their international job calls, start-up packages, and mobility schemes. All too often, however, these are reactive, fragmented, and unlinked to wider institutional objectives. Even the most promising hires will struggle if they are placed in an environment devoid of strategic clarity, coherent academic structures, or possibilities of interdisciplinary growth.

Recruitment, without being situated within a larger vision of academic development, tends to be transactional rather than transformational.

From talent acquisition to faculty development

The institutional reputation remains one of the pull factors in attracting and retaining talent. At the same time, however, reputation is not an option on which leading universities can rely. This provides openings through which new regions and innovation clusters can compete. Researchers at every career stage consider seriously how well the institution supports academic growth.

This includes:

• Clear career pathways in line with the priorities of the institution and its research strengths. Given the above, institutions should provide transparent promotion models, structured development plans, and clear signals about how individual careers link into the wider mission.
• Support for early-career researchers by way of mentoring, training in disciplinary methods and transferable skills, teaching experience, and integration into scientific networks.
• Flexible appointment models that enable hybrid roles, intersectoral collaboration, and evolving academic careers across institutions, sectors, or national boundaries.
• An inclusion and recognition culture in which various academic trajectories find their place and are valued. Professorship is no longer the sole means of achieving success. Positions in science management, research coordination, communication, and data stewardship become highly relevant.

Successful universities therefore consider faculty not as static positions to be filled but as dynamic contributors to institutional evolution. The strategic field of career development shapes both academic identity and long-term excellence.

Innovation requires institutional learning

Innovation does not come from a brilliant mind working in isolation. Innovation needs an enabling environment that embraces collaboration, experimentation, and learning from failure. The universities that operate as learning organizations and not just knowledge producers are in a stronger position to stimulate innovation.

This involves:

• Stimulating interdisciplinary exchange: for example, a university might establish a centre for digital health to bring together experts from medicine, computer science and ethics. Shared laboratory space, open data platforms, and research seminars across faculties make disciplinary boundaries more permeable. Joint appointments further anchor such collaboration.

Leadership cultures encourage exploration, tolerate risk, and view failure as part of progress. Training in leadership can prize experimentation and learning. Institutions can provide funding for pilot projects that do not promise quick results and can reward staff for initiative that goes beyond typical performance measures.

• Developing institutional memory: Strategic learning depends upon the ability to retain and translate past experience into future direction. Institutions need to treat initiatives as part of a cumulative process, using insights from past efforts to strengthen foresight, adaptability, and organisational intelligence.

The successful universities in becoming innovative hubs realize that it all starts with structures, values, and capabilities they build:

Global competition: clarity, not just scale

In these times of global rankings and heightened competition, most universities equate success with size, visibility, or output metrics. But quantity is no guarantee of quality. What does matter, however, is coherence-meaning a clear institutional identity, purpose, and direction.

Strategic clarity includes

• The identification and cultivation of special strengths. Though many universities develop internal strategy and foresight units, some rely on external advisors. Clarity requires substance-not slogans.
• Long-term focus: Ensuring recruitment and development policies are aligned to long-term goals. All too often, recruitment is done as one-for-one replacement, appointing a successor at the same level and in the same field. Recruitment should instead be based on future needs and strategic priorities.
• Identifying institutional knowledge, tackling international/global challenges: health, climate change, democracy, or digital transformation. Institutions are right on track as long as they are able to translate global challenges into culturally rooted and regionally relevant responses.

Rather than attempting to be like elite institutions, especially smaller and mid-sized and research-intensive universities can derive great benefit from a focus on what is distinctive for them. Honest reflection helps define a unique niche and makes institutions more relevant to funders, policymakers, and international partners. Academic ambition needs to be grounded in strategic focus.

Leadership and policy: Enabling strategic renewal

Yet academic strategy cannot fly without leadership that recognises its transformative potential. Leaders have to balance short-term demands with long-term renewal. That takes courage, patience and institutional trust.

Supporting mechanisms include:

• There may be incentives for career development, interdisciplinarity and global engagement through dedicated funding for early and mid-career appointments, resources for cross-faculty collaboration and support for international initiatives, such as joint degrees or staff exchanges. • Rewarding institutional learning and organizational innovation: traditional funding schemes focus on individual excellence. Complementary models should also consider the extent to which institutions build mentoring systems, develop inclusive research cultures or introduce new ways of collaborating. • A dialogue between institutions, policy makers, and funders in order to harmonize expectations and support capacity-building: funding instruments should be fit for institutional needs, providing flexibility in programmes for strategic recruitment, structural reform, and performance metrics reflecting sustainable development. Renewing educational institutions means creating an enabling environment where research and education can flourish continuously. Investment in institutional capacity Universities are standing on a fork in the road: the global competitive pressures are very real, yet the opportunity to rethink how to build academic excellence is also palpable. Moving from talent pipelines to institutional innovation allows universities to evolve into adaptive, mission-driven knowledge creation centers. This needs long-term commitment and investment in people, culture and capacity. In addition, strategies that are at once visionary and rooted in the day-to-day work of academic communities will be needed. True excellence is not a matter of chasing prestige; it flows from the cultivation of environments in which talent grows, innovation prospers and purpose leads.

After months of elaborate discussion, the student government at the University of California, Berkeley, passed a Hindu Heritage Month proclamation. Hindu student groups called it a first such recognition by an American university.

A statement by CYAN Hindus at Berkeley and Hindu YUVA at UC Berkeley said the measure passed nine months after the ASUC Senate first voted down Hindu Heritage Month. The outcome is credited to extensive discussions with the office of the Executive Vice President and student leaders, with the result being termed a step towards Hindu representation in the student government.

According to the statement, the newly passed proclamation "represents a positive step toward better representation of Hindus in the student government," though the groups made it clear that "the new proclamation is by no means perfect."

They thanked the EVP and her office “for opening dialogue with our student organizations respectfully over the past six months, proving that conversations can be had despite even the most contentious disagreements.”

First, the proclamation includes a recognition where the ASUC Senate formally acknowledges the term Hinduphobia and a series of targeted attacks on Hindu temples in the Bay Area.

It acknowledges Sanatana Dharma and its ideals as a decolonial understanding of the term ‘Hinduism’ by the Senate. The Senate further notes that, out of the various unions and coalitions representing religious groups on campus, there is no Hindu caucus representing Hindu students.

The statement invites students and community members to juxtapose old and new proclamations and notice that the ASUC Senate originally voted down Hindu Heritage Month due to concerns over 'Hindu Nationalism, yet the new proclamation does not differ substantively from its predecessor. The groups go ahead to say that none of the two versions has talked about Hindu Nationalism.

The groups claimed the changes could have been worked out with discussion and that their student government holds Hindu students to a double standard. Still, they praised the Senate for a crucial first step toward better relations with the Hindu community.

They hope that the proclamation will “open the door to genuine, good-faith dialogue” between Hindu student organizations and ASUC leaders, pointing out their discussions with the EVP’s office showed such dialogue could happen.

"Too often, dialogue has been hampered by the conflation of Hindu and South Asian identity, leading to gate-keeping by 'South Asian' organisations on campus," the statement said. "Their statements and actions on issues affecting our community--ie, Pahalgam--have eclipsed the lived experiences of Hindu students--oftentimes made without their calling upon our communities directly."

"It is our sincere hope that henceforth discussions relating to Hindu identity and its representation would be informed not by outside political narratives but by the voices of Hindu students on campus," they said. Student leaders celebrated the milestone as the "FIRST EVER US university to recognise Hindu Heritage Month," aiming at finally acknowledging vandalised temples, rising Hinduphobia, among other things. They also congratulated student leaders @aryanshinde21 and Arya Kulkarni, encouraging students to reach out to CYAN. Hindu Heritage Month has gained visibility in recent years across several US states and municipalities, where diaspora organisations formalise recognition and bring awareness to what they term a rising tide of Hinduphobia. This year, UC Berkeley became an especially charged site for debates about Hindu identity and representation amid national conversations about free speech and minority rights.

Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University organized an important academic conference with the theme "Future Context: A New Paradigm for Art and Design Education," which took place in Milan, Italy from Nov 15-16.

Organised by the AADTHU, Tsinghua University Milan Institute of Art & Design, and the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub, Tsinghua University hosted the Tsinghua International Conference on Art & Design Education, ICADE.

Present at the event were more than 100 university leaders, professors, scholars, and representatives of industries in China, Italy, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Singapore, the UK, the US, and other countries.

The Suzhou two-day conference included, among other events, eight keynote speeches, two roundtable discussions with university leaders, four thematic forums, two parallel seminars, and a series of international art and design workshops. The program allowed participants to share experiences through cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues and investigate how artificial intelligence is reshaping artistic expression and educational paradigms.

Opening the conference, Qin Chuan, secretary of the CPC Tsinghua Academy of Arts & Design committee, said the five years since the conference started coincided with dramatic global changes, including revolutionary breakthroughs in AI.

"On such an international platform, we firmly believe that no matter how the global landscape and emerging technologies may evolve, we are staunch companions in art and design education, always committed to increasing communication and deepening cooperation -this is our shared dream," he said. "We are also deeply conscious that art and design are an international language, able even to bind the world together in these uncertain times."

He pointed out that ICADE focuses on building a collaborative platform for the future this year, including deep integration in technology and culture. The topics he noticed included redefining creative logic in the AI era, restructuring educational systems in an interdisciplinary context, finding the possibility of symbiotic coexistence in the face of cultural diversity.

We are very much looking forward to collaborating with all the participants at this conference, jointly envisioning the future of art and design education in order to establish a framework for cooperation that could be continuously developed while facing the world and embracing tomorrow.

Other opening-ceremony speakers included Anna Barbara, president of POLI.design, a consortium of Politecnico di Milano; Dalia Gallico, executive vice president of the World Olymp'Arts Council; Lorenzo Imbesi, president of the Cumulus Association; and Wu Jian, head of the Haier Innovation Design Center. Wu Qiong, dean of the Academy of Arts & Design at Tsinghua University, sent a congratulatory letter. Shi Danqing, associate dean of AADTHU, presided at the ceremony.

Design, as a discipline, stands at that critical turning point that technological advancement, imminent social problems, and new business models all push against, together. May this conference serve as a catalyst in sparking in-depth dialogue on reconstructing educational models and integrating art with technology within new contexts, thus inspiring renewal of vitality.

On the first day, keynote speeches and leaders' roundtable took place, gathering together the leaders of world-renowned art and design institutions and pioneering founders of newly established schools that have garnered worldwide attention. The speakers connected classical heritage with future trends and focused on current innovations so as to promote sustainable development of art and design education.

Distinguished speakers included Anna Barbara, president of POLI.design; Rebecca Wright, dean of the S School at Central Saint Martins College of Art; Rachel Dickson, deputy director of the Glasgow School of Art; Francesco Zurlo, dean of the School of Design at Politecnico di Milano; Yang Dongjiang, chair of the academic committee at AADTHU; Kun-Pyo Lee, dean of the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University; and John Ochsendorf, founding director of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design. Barbara defined the digital revolution as a "revolution of time" and asked designers to turn their attention to forming time and not only physical space. She added that AI will be applied to serve as a tool for harmonizing human needs with the environment, to help resolve the conflicts of a digital world, and to create a more sustainable shared economy. 

According to Wright, design education has to keep optimism in view of uncertainty in the future, and constructing a new "design language" is the key in dealing with challenges. She pointed out, "The real challenge is not whether one must adopt AI, but how to integrate technology with uniquely human wisdom." Dickson said design education needs to break through traditional disciplinary frameworks and promote educational innovation based on cross-field collaboration. She said in the future, design education needs to be grounded in a balance of tradition and innovation, with curiosity at its heart. 

She further called for an interdisciplinary system that is more inclusive and capable of solving global challenges, including sustainable development. Francesco Zurlo developed the concept of interdependent design during his talk and stressed that design education has to be able to face complexity and not simplify problems. According to him, contemporary design needs to reunite humanistic values with technology. This philosophy is necessary in training designers who will be capable of taking on complex social challenges and contributing to building up a sustainable future. Yang discussed how design education must change in the times of AI. 

As such, it is necessary to make a fundamental shift in the basic value from technology-oriented to thinking-oriented. He advocated for a breakthrough in the traditional linear structures of knowledge in developing new teaching systems where professional skill training is preserved, while primary importance should rest on innovative thinking and systematic reasoning capabilities of the students. Through the speech, Lee traced the historical development of the paradigms of design to reveal the transforming direction of design education in the AI era. He said that designers should become "final decision-makers" or "ultimate stewards," and educators should give priority to enhancing the critical thinking and value judgment of students. Ochsendorf emphasized the need to speed up the transformation of higher education nowadays. 

He said that all students should possess basic design skills and personal project portfolios, and the implementation of AI technology should be driven by designers who take human needs as the main priority. In the afternoon of the same day, two roundtable discussions with leaders respectively took place on the themes of "The Future Mission of Design: Interdisciplinary Education and Global Challenges" and "The Coordinates of Institutions Within the Contemporary Context." 

There are thematic forums and seminars covering a wide range of professional and academic fields like spatial environments, fashion design, industrial design, information design, smart manufacturing, contemporary art, craft art, and digital art. Scholars and industry experts conducted extensive discussions about the above-mentioned disciplines with topics such as "Rhetorical Translation: Aesthetic Resonance Across Cultures", "Double Subjects: Human-Machine Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Integration", "Plural Spaces: The Narrative Tension of Multi-Dimensional Experience" and "Sensory Verbs: Bodily Experience and Artistic Expression"

The allegations of admissions fraud continue to spread more widely in Hong Kong, where the city's police this week disclosed that 126 reports of allegedly fraudulent academic qualifications from the city's universities had been received in the first seven months of this year.

But these figures represent just the tip of an iceberg since many cases are not reported to the police by universities, raising concerns that any acceleration in cases could hurt Hong Kong's reputation as a higher education hub.

“ HKU has so far received a few hundred cases this year involving applicants suspected of submitting false academic credentials for admission, a spokesperson from HKU said on 13 October, while adding “none of these cases has been enrolled.

The cases in question principally involved applications to the city's universities by students from mainland China, which have grown in the past 2 to 3 years.

More than 30 students from mainland China were found to try to use fake documents to enroll in HKU's business school last year, even though the institution played it down at first. Then dozens of such cases started coming up one after another.

In May, a student from the mainland Li Sixuan was given an eight-month prison sentence in Hong Kong after she pleaded guilty to faking her Ivy League qualifications in order to apply to HKU for a master's in applied linguistics. She had falsely claimed that she graduated from Columbia University.

Her defence lawyer told the Hong Kong court that his client was “very determined” to study at HKU.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong has announced that it refused "several hundred" applications with suspected fake credentials during the application period this year, most of them from applicants from mainland China.

CUHK's director of admissions and financial aid, Andy Wong, had said, in remarks on 11 October, that their university did not lodge police reports "since the applicants were outside of the city and there is no evidence that the applicants had accomplices in Hong Kong - there is not much they can do".

It was nonetheless a sharp increase from about 10 cases at CUHK the previous year, academics noted, pointing to an escalating problem with exaggerated admissions statements, falsified references and fake credentials.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University said it had found about 10 cases of fraudulent applications, and the respective applications and admission offers have been canceled.

The police said that, following reports of fraudulent academic qualifications, 55 had been arrested between January 2022 and July this year, with nine so far charged and six convicted. Others were still under investigation.

Hong Kong police also said 21 suspected "unlawful intermediaries", or agents, in mainland China, had been referred to mainland authorities.

More than half of the arrests were made during the first half of this year.

Fear of reputational impact

"Hong Kong is seriously concerned about the implications of such fraud for the reputation of its highly reputed universities. It has much to lose, having vigorously promoted Hong Kong internationally as a higher education hub," a CUHK academic, who wished to remain anonymous, told University World News in an interview.

"There has been a big rush of applications from the mainland because of Hong Kong universities' good results in global university rankings. But the downside is many want to get a Hong Kong degree by hook or by crook. And some are assisted by unscrupulous agents in China."

In January and earlier this month, the ICAC, an independent Commission Against Corruption, in Hong Kong conducted anti-fraud workshops for 40 admissions officers and other staff at universities. Cheuk Chi-yan, head of the Corruption Prevention Department at the ICAC, said in early October that the participants were all managers of the admissions procedures.

They are not only implementers of the system but also guardians of educational values, he said while addressing the workshop.

Hong Kong's undersecretary for education, Shi Junhui, said in the same workshop that with the plan for Hong Kong to turn into a higher education hub "the authorities attach great importance to safeguarding the integrity, quality and reputation of Hong Kong's post-secondary education sector".

He called on the institutions "to work together to safeguard the reputation of higher education in Hong Kong, establish an effective anti-corruption mechanism, uphold the principles of fairness and justice, and work together to create clean campuses".

A Hong Kong Education Bureau spokesperson said on 9 October that with the release of the World University Rankings 2026 announced by Times Higher Education, the publicly funded universities "have continued to hold top spots, rendering Hong Kong the only city in the world with five universities ranked among the global top 100, with all its ranked institutions gaining higher positions".

In the latest THE World University Rankings, released this month, HKU rose two places to 33rd globally, while the CUHK moved up three places to 41st, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology jumped eight places to 58th.

"Mainland families are highly rankings-orientated when choosing a university, and these results make an impact. Many more families are turning to Hong Kong, especially with visa problems in Australia and Canada and uncertainty over visas for Chinese students wanting to study in the United States ," said the CUHK academic.

Hardline stance

HKU is one such institution adopting this tough stance. This week, the HKU spokesperson said: “HKU consistently treats cases involving fraudulent documents with the utmost seriousness, adopting rigorous measures during the admissions process.

"Applications suspected of containing fabricated qualifications will not be considered. Applicants who are discovered to have falsified academic credentials will be subject to action by the University." The spokesperson added: "Where concrete evidence of fraudulent misrepresentation is established, we will invariably report the matter to the police for further investigation and prosecution." The Hong Kong government raised its cap on the number of non-local students at undergraduate level in publicly funded universities last year. More than 90 per cent of non-local places have been taken up by mainland Chinese students. 

"Following the Government's doubling of the enrolment ceilings for non-local students of UGC-funded universities from 20% to 40% from the 2024 to 2025 academic year, the number of non-local students enrolled in the UGC-funded programmes has recorded double-digit year-on-year growth," the education bureau spokesperson said. Starting from the 2026 and 2027 academic years, the Hong Kong government will raise the enrolment ceiling for self-financing non-local students for taught programmes from around 40% of local student places to 50% the city's Chief Executive John Lee said in his 17 September policy address. 

Universities fear even more fraud with the number of non-local students set to rise even further as students from mainland China flock to Hong Kong's highly regarded universities. AI-powered verification A HKPolyU representative said at the ICAC workshop earlier this month that it had a stringent qualification and other document verification process, which included interviews and credential checks, for applicants. HKPolyU now plans to include AI technology in its application process for better academic verification. HKU's assistant director of admissions, Raymond Wong, stated that the AI-assisted interview system adopted by his institution would check students' identity and anomalies during the interviews, thus helping it block impersonation and cheating.

On December 4, 2025, the Russia Education Agency, a joint venture between Synergy Corporation and Innopraktika, opened its first representative office in New Delhi. The opening is timely, as it coincides with the state visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to India, hence heralding closer bilateral relations in education and culture between the two countries. It also bills itself as the much-needed connecting bridge, offering Indian students access to Russian higher education in fields of emerging demand like medicine, IT, and engineering. ​

The New Delhi office is a single-point support for aspiring students and includes personalized counseling on the selection of universities and programs, admission processes, visa support, preparation of documentation, and cultural orientation that enables them to make a hassle-free adaptation in Russia. The leadership of the agency is likely to facilitate more than 10,000 Indian students in Russian universities next year, adding to the legacy of Soviet-era education that created Indian goodwill ambassadors.​

Vadim Lobov, head of Synergy Corporation, termed the opening a very important day and said new frontiers of collaboration would be opened during the visit by Putin. He underlined the importance of establishing people-to-people links through effective access to possibilities of study in Russia, job opportunities, and professional skills. First Deputy CEO of Innopraktika Natalia Popova underlined that Russian-educated Indians could be integrated into innovation ecosystems for developing high-tech ties between the countries.​ Further expansions include the opening of branches in Mumbai and Chennai by 2026, along with collaborations with Indian schools in Russian language courses and other events for cultural exchange. In fact, the maiden "Bridge of Friendship: Russia and India" session organized by the agency drew in more than 1,000 Delhi high school students, while plans are afoot for its national rollout. This program fits into larger frameworks such as India's SPARC and GIAN programs, and Russia's ITEC scholarships; hence, it depicts robust academic exchange.​ The inauguration of the branch shows the surging interest in the best Russian programs and has thus facilitated pathways for Indian youth to get global exposure. It nurtures future leaders by fostering cross-cultural understanding in order to consolidate long-lasting relations between India and Russia.