Austerity in the USA
Savings needed at US Universities University World News. carries a piece by William Patrick Leonard, vice dean of SolBridge International School of Business in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, suggesting that US Higher educat…
Posts, page 41
True Crime on Campus §22: Surprise, surprise
More true crime on campus: some surprising occurrences Surprising things can happen on campus. Fortunately, it’s hard to catch our ever-vigilant Security team unawares… 07:15 Security received a report of a delivery driv…
Agent power and international student recruitment
Are agents too powerful? A recent Times Higher Education story on the use of agents by UK universities in international student recruitment noted: UK universities recruited more than 50,000 international students through…
On the real bottom line
Transnational initiatives pay dividends far greater than a share of the overseas student market Times Higher Education carries this piece (by me) on the real value of international activity: The British Council has predi…
Fast Food Degrees
KFC launches finger lickin’ good honours degree A previous post some 18 months ago noted that Morrisons was to fund 20 students a year to undertake a business and management degree it is sponsoring. Before that there wer…
The University of Nottingham at the Olympics
As has previously been noted here the University of Nottingham is very keen on the Olympics: Six University of Nottingham graduates have bagged Olympic medals for Team GB over the past 20 years, making it the UK’s 7th mo…
The Imperfect University: The Cult of Efficiency
The cult of efficiency I’ve recently been reminded about a great book recommended to me by my former supervisor, Nigel Norris. Half a century since its publication it remains a fascinating read and sits midpoint between …
The Beginning of the End for Traditional HE?
Will MOOCs kill universities? No. Forbes carries an expansive piece on the implications of MOOCs and asks “Is Coursera the Beginning of the End for Traditional Higher Education?“. Could high-quality MOOCs eventually do t…
The Value of International University Networks
There are more than you might think… The July edition of the International Unit newsletter (which can be downloaded as a PDF here) has an interesting article on the value and power of international university networks. I…
Serious or Celeb? More Honorary Degrees
More Honorary Degree diversions Detailed investigation of Honorary Degrees down the years has led me to a simple conclusion – almost all recipients fall clearly into one of two categories: they are either serious or cele…
More strange degrees
Odd by degrees It’s graduation season again and helpfully Huff Post has provided a list of rather strange degrees from the US. Some of these are really rather splendid and include: Viticulture & Enology: Grape Growing an…
Yale-NUS – high stakes higher education in Singapore
A lot is riding on the Yale-NUS development A very upbeat report from the National University of Singapore on progress in the Yale-NUS partnership: As the first liberal arts college in Singapore offering a proactive educ…
From National to Global Universities
A nice piece from David Wheeler in the Chronicle of Higher Education on some of the challenges for universities in going global: Universities, like companies, may need to make the transformation from being a national bra…
Scottish Universities Challenged
Improving governance or constraining autonomy? An earlier post covered the outcomes of a review of governance in Scottish universities and reported a number of concerns about what looked like far-reaching and extremely i…
A new world ranking of universities
What we’ve all been waiting for… Yes, it’s another new world ranking. This time from the previously unheard of Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) from Saudi Arabia. The website offers little information about th…
Olympic Torch visits University of Nottingham
Olympic Torch at Jubilee Campus The Olympic Torch passed through the University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus on Friday 29 June. As a special tribute to the Torch relay and for one day only, the University dressed up th…
QS World subject ranking – UK universities
New QS world rankings by subject The Guardian has a summary of UK universities’ performance in the latest QS subject rankings and it looks like Oxford comes out top Institution name Highest rank Subject University of Oxf…
Blots on the information landscape
Exciting new report on redesigning the higher education data and information landscape A previous post commented on regulatory issues and the work being undertaken on the “information landscape”. A report on part of this…
Offshoring opportunities – a real alternative?
Minister proposes overseas campuses as alternative to international student recruitment Times Higher Education reports that David Willetts seems to be pushing overseas campus expansion – with private finance support – to…
The Imperfect University: Governance challenges at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia: considerable turbulance at the top A rather topical post for the latest in the Imperfect University series. There have been some extraordinary goings on at the University of Virginia. To the surpr…