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Boosting student exchange and mobility in the Pacific Rim region was high on the agenda at the recent APEC summit in Vladivostok, Russia, as Australia and Russia prioritised a deal to open up the region's higher education market. With 21 member nations in APEC, any unilateral student exchange deal could lead to a strong student mobility programme akin to Europe's Erasmus exchange programme.

University students in Paraguay with outstanding academic records but limited financial resources are being offered three-year scholarships to study English in their country to help prepare them for the Fulbright scholarship programme. The US Embassy works with the private sector on the programme.

The South African government has proposed an internationalisation strategy to strengthen economic and political relations with other countries, saying that although internationalisation exists at individual institutions it remains uncoordinated at the national level. It has plans for boosting exchange within Africa and building links globally.

Hobsons has launched a new Virtual Orientation app in the UK, mainland Europe and the Middle East. The app offers detailed orientation for prospective that is customised and institution-specific. It also announced a new partnership with University of Limerick in Ireland this week.

The number of students around the world considering transnational education is rising and “there is still unexploited potential in the TNE market”, according to a new British Council survey. In 2010, 17% of more than 21,000 prospective international students expressed interest in TNE, however, 28% of 11,000 students surveyed so far this year showed interest.

How to maximise the customer relationship was the challenge tackled by Luis Huete, business expert and resident professor at IESE Business School in Spain, at the latest ALTO seminar organised in London, UK...

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA has risen to the top of QS's latest global university rankings, unveiled today, with its international faculty one reason for its dominance. The US institution knocked Cambridge University in the UK from the top spot which it had held for two years.

The number of students enrolled in tertiary education outside of their country of origin reached 4.1 million in 2010, according to new research from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – up from 3.7 million in 2009 and by a staggering 99% since 2000.

Iranian students have been left in the lurch after the Canadian government closed its embassy in Tehran and the Iranian embassy in Ottawa last Friday. Many Iranian students fear they will be unable to obtain or renew their student visas with just weeks until the start of term.

Foreign politicians and diplomats, international footballers and global pop icons are among those who have been educated in English by the London School of English, which has just reached 100...

In a first-of-its-kind deal, the Chinese government has agreed to train 300 Indian teachers at top Chinese universities in a bid to boost Mandarin learning across India. The teachers will then return to India to help promote the uptake of Mandarin language study. The agreement is between the Confucius Institute and India's Central Board of Secondary Education.

A busy networking event between educators and agencies – and information-laden seminars from UKBA and China experts, among others – signified an upbeat international recruitment event in London, UK this week.

China and Brazil have welcomed recommendations that 50,000 Canadian students a year should be studying abroad within 10 years, made by Canada's new advisory panel on international education. Only 2.2% of all full-time university students in Canada took a for-credit study abroad programme in 2006.

Bright World, one of the leading guardianship services for overseas students studying in the UK, has launched a portal enabling parents to keep better track of their children when abroad.

A cross-party parliamentary report has called for international students to be removed from net migration figures, claiming the government’s policy of including them is damaging to the economy. It also calls for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to help the UK expand its share of the "lucrative" student market.