More true crime on campus Strange things can happen on campus. Some of them involving people who seem reluctant to keep their clothes on. Fortunately, our indefatigable Security staff are more than capable of responding …
There aren’t any MOOC business models which stack up. Yet An earlier Imperfect University post on MOOCs questioned their ultimate impact on traditional university provision. Inside Higher Ed carries an interesting piece …
Size isn’t everything but does it matter for a university? I picked up an interesting blog post from Andy Westwood, CEO of GuildHE, in which he argues that the reduction in the required number of students for the award o…
2013 University Rankings published by The Times The new Times league table is out and has been published here. There is though very little to get excited about in the Top 20 with hardly any movement and only one new entr…
Sainsbury’s Local – an opportunity for rebranding Sainsbury’s recently opened a Sainsbury’s Local store on Derby Road in the Lenton area of Nottingham at the heart of one of the most popular student districts in the city…
Some US universities spend a LOT on sport A recent Bloomberg report on US universities expenditure on sport highlights the huge amounts spent by Rutgers, which tops the list of spending: Like most of Rutgers University’s…
Because universities are difficult, but worth it I’ve managed six posts to date in the Imperfect University series to date. Covering leadership, regulation, governance in Scotland, not so revolutionary online provision a…
The 30 Universities making their names count Following the outstanding success of the ‘100 under 50’ ranking in the Times Higher Education (a ranking which acknowledged that some universities didn’t enjoy all the advanta…
New directions for service leavers: but should UK be doing more? The University of Nottingham is offering extra places for for former service personnel wishing to retrain as teachers. It’s an interesting development and …
More true crime on campus: accidents happen, sometimes intentionally Accidents can happen on campus. Fortunately, our Security staff are more than capable of responding to all kinds of events. Even when some of them real…
Some similarities but quite a few differences too It’s that time of year again. Well, almost. It’s commencement season in the USA and will be graduation season in the UK in about six weeks or so. A couple of years ago I …
Exciting new opportunities for purveyors of fake qualifications Earlier posts have reported on particular examples of fake university degrees including a scandal in Pakistan and the entertaining story about a dog which w…
New Guardian League Table for 2013 Top 20 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year’s position in brackets): 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (4) LSE 4 (3) St Andrews 5 (6) Warwick 6 (5) UCL 7 (8) Durham 7…
Students really aren’t immigrants Excellent piece in a recent edition of Times Higher Education by Edward Acton. The essence of his argument is that international students make a massive contribution to the UK economy an…
The Future of HE? Or Massive Open Online Confusion? For the latest Imperfect University piece a few thoughts on a topic which is attracting considerable comment at the moment: the growth of the Massive Open Online Course…
A new higher education ranking – this time of countries U21 has published some new work on national education systems that gives the first ranking of countries which are the ‘best’ at providing higher education: The Univ…
Which are the best apps for administrators? This does presuppose that every university administrator is equipped with an iPad. Which is not necessarily the case. Anyway, if you are fortunate enough to be issued with an i…
A different kind of league table Universities Week this year had a distinct Olympics focus: 30 April 2012: To mark the start of Universities Week 2012 (30 April – 7 May), a new report launched today reveals the statistic…
A new model. Designed by consultants Worried about the future of higher education? Concerned about the impact the new fees regime is going to have on your university? Bit nervous that everyone is talking about ‘disruptiv…
The Impact of Universities on their Regions I was fortunate to attend this event last week. Richard Muir of IPPR was first to speak and drew heavily on the recent IPPR report (with a rather dodgy title): “Beyond bricks a…