Sixty three Brazilian universities are to offer Pakistani students scholarships to study in Brazil, through a scheme announced last week. The scholarships can be used on a range of courses, including medicine, engineering, business administration and international relations. But they come with a catch – recipients must return to their home country after completing their studies.

Less than half of language schools worldwide said their enrolments grew in the second quarter of 2012 compared with last year, according to the latest language travel survey from the Association of Language Travel Organisations (ALTO). Inversely, business was up for agents with 45% reporting growth over 41%.

The number of English-taught Masters courses available in Europe has risen dramatically in the last five years, according to research from the Institute of International Education (IIE), USA. The Netherlands and Germany top the list in terms of number of programmes offered.

Education agents are more likely to be used by international students in key source countries considering postgraduate (PG) study rather than undergraduate (UG). This is one observation of the latest Student Insight findings, produced by the British Council's Education Intelligence unit, which cover India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey.