At Home: First World Student Day Passes with Little Fanfare
On August 15th, PIE News posted a story about Languages Canada inaugural World Student Day. If you haven’t heard about it until now, you’re not alone, as the event happened on August 8th, and it took a full week for PIE News, a site focussed on the development of international education, to report on it. The focus of this day is to “celebrate what international students bring to Canadian culture” and to help to “showcase the importance of the international language education sector to Canada,” according to Languages Canada Spokesperson, Gillaum Debreuil.

There also may be a bit of confusion because there already is an internationally recognized World Student Day, otherwise known as International Student’s Day, that is annually celebrated on November 17th, and which started in 1941 in London. This one is to commemorate the anniversary of the 1939 storming of the University of Prague by the Nazis.

But just in case that’s not enough, there’s also the World Student Day happening on October 17th that’s hosted by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which encourages students all over the world to pray for one another and for specific situations facing students around the world.

So for international students, it seems you not only get to choose what school you study at, but which day you celebrate on.

Around the Globe: Ghana Delays University Openings due to Ebola
In Ghana the opening of universities and colleges for the new academic year will be delayed by at least two weeks so that measures to screen international students for Ebola can be put in place. Ghana has not yet had recorded any cases of the deadly disease, though it is only a few hours away from highly infected Sierra Leone, and the Deputy Education Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has said that the Ministry will do all it can to preserve the stability of the academic calendar.

The Ghana Health Service is calling on universities to further monitor students for symptoms every 21 days. Internationally, various schools are cancelling planned classes in universities in Ghana over concerns of the virus.