They came from Burkina Faso and Brazil, from China and the Czech Republic, from Senegal, Switzerland and beyond, to talk about international collaboration and exchange in university education. The occasion was the inaugural colloquium of the International Forum of Public Universities held at Université de Montréal in October.

If you're a science student and want a faster route to your PhD, enrol yourself in a Canadian, not a U.S. university.

Writing is one of the crucial skills that academics need to perfect, no matter what field they're in. But it's a skill that scholars, and everyone else, mostly learn through instruction, then trial and error.

Touched by a chance encounter on an earlier trip to Cambodia, Toronto-based photographer V. Tony Hauser returned to that country in May 2006 to photograph Cambodian children who had survived land-mine accidents.

When you're given lemons, the old saying goes, make lemonade. That's the situation at the University of Northern British Columbia, where at least a dozen researchers are working on 28 different projects to understand and mitigate the devastating impact of the mountain pine beetle.

Here's the good news: faculty numbers are up significantly in Canada and should continue to rise. The not so good news: student enrolment has climbed even faster, far outpacing faculty growth.

Canadian universities graduate plenty of people who can deal with the intricacies of molecular biology and genetic manipulation, but few who understand the basic mechanics of defending the country's plants, including crops and forests, from biological threats responsible for billions of dollars worth of damage every year. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency wants to fill this need by building links with universities to nurture the next generation of plant protection experts.