THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION–A Chinese list of the world’s top universities would seem an unlikely concern for French politicians. But this year, France’s legislature took aim at the annual rankings produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which claims to list the 500 best universities in the world. The highest-ranked French entry, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, comes in at No. 42 full story

SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA–Costa Rica has taken on the challenge of converting English as a common language for the majority of the population. One of the objectives is that 75% of high school students are proficient in English by 2017. To meet the goal, some 1.150 English teachers began this week training full story