Kimberlee Parton
Staff Writer
NATIONAL AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF MEXICO
Mexico City, Mexico
In late September, six protesting students were killed and another 43 went missing after being attacked by police and masked gunmen in the southern Mexican city of Iguala during a protest for education reform. Students at UNAM held a two-day protest in support of finding the missing students after weeks of uncertainty, citing the Mexican government’s lack of transparency in their search and its ties to drug trafficking group, Guerreros Unidos, as signs of institutionalized corruption. Amid the spread of protests throughout the country, the governor of Guerrero state, Angel Aguirre, stepped down from office last Thursday.
UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI
Mumbai, India
According to Wealth-X and the UBS Billionaire Census 2014, the University of Mumbai is the highest-ranking university outside of the United States which produces the most billionaires — outranking MIT and four of the eight ivy league schools: Dartmouth College, Duke University, Columbia University and Brown University. The three other non-American colleges ranked in the top 20 were the London School of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University and ETH Zurich. Of the 2,325 billionaires included in the study, 42 percent have at least graduated with a bachelor’s degree, while 35 percent hold no tertiary-level degree at all.
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Oxford, England, UK
In January of this year, Google raised some eyebrows when it bought Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) research company, DeepMind, for a reported $400 million. This past week, Google announced it is partnering with the University of Oxford to “further its research into image and language recognition.” The tech giant has hired two A.I. companies — Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory — whose seven founding scientists are based out of the university. Although Google has kept relatively quiet about the details of its new research, they hope the partnership with Oxford will inspire “deep learning” — a type of A.I. that mimics biological neural networks.
BAGHDAD UNIVERSITY
Baghdad, Iraq
Angry students took to the streets on Oct. 16 to protest the establishment of an all-women’s offshoot of Baghdad University, calling an end to separation of the sexes and religious extremism in higher education. The Iraqi government has since cancelled its plans for the all-women’s college, but continue to support many state institutions who encourage religious political parties and social movements. The Iraqi Ministry of Education has banned university graduation ceremonies, imposed conservative dress codes on female teachers and students, and is allowing radical religious authorities to openly advocate for the integration of Shiism into the academic curriculum.
