The Times Higher Education World University Rankings are out The last rankings of the season are now available from THE. Not yet done a comparison with last year but the top 20 looks like this: 1 California Institute of …
Another plagiarism concern Previous posts here have covered related matters including online plagiarism, plagiarism in admissions essays and a video attempting to advise students on plagiarism. A recent piece in The Chro…
Another True Crime on Campus USA It’s a bit like those US versions of top rated UK reality TV shows. Except it obviously isn’t. And they did it first. However, as a cursory examination of some of the highlights from this…
An interesting view on freshers’ week Libby Purves, writing in The Times, argues that freshers’ week is not quite what it seems and has to stop. The new fees regime, she suggests, may put an end to this “ghastly scam”. T…
Freshers! Come and try a new kind of learning laboratory The Chronicle of Higher Education has a fascinating freshers’ week piece on a very different kind of learning lab, within the setting of a student dorm: Students m…
A new direction for the campus novel? The Chronicle Reviewc has an excellent article on a new campus novel from Jeffrey Eugenides about leaving campus behind. A five year old post on my other blog includes reference to a…
More international adventures An interesting piece in Times Higher Education about what many might see as a surprising international venture for the University of Buckingham: Buckingham already has similar arrangements w…
University isn’t just a business – and the student isn’t always right In his review of higher education funding, Lord Browne made the student as consumer the centrepiece of his rationale for change. The Government’s Whit…
Another exciting new higher education development The Evening Standard, along with much of the fashion press (I believe), carries this story about a new fashion and design college: MOVE over AC Grayling, there’s a new co…
A new venture in Africa for Carnegie Mellon – an unequivocal good? A number of previous posts here have touched on differing approaches to internationalisation and branch campuses. The Chronicle carries this story about …
2011 UK: Swedish Registrars Seminar This event, held in September at the University of Cardiff, was the latest in long series of biennial seminars, alternating venues between the UK and Sweden and I was privileged to be …
UK University League Tables 2011/12 Given the huge amount of traffic (OK, huge for me) to the site over the past week or so on UK league tables, I thought a summary might come in useful. Four league tables have been publ…
Sunday Times League Table 2012 The full table has now been published and is available (paid access) on the Sunday Times website. Some interesting changes inside the top 20, largely I suspect down to changes in the way NS…
A foreign university closes its UK campus The New York Times reports that as a result of the new restrictions on student visas, at least one institution has been forced to close a UK campus. Schiller International Univer…
New opportunities for private providers The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good piece on the interest for-profit providers are taking in the UK market. Robert Lytle of the Parthenon Group, management consultants wit…
QS World University Rankings 2011 – Results for UK universities The UK presence in the QS top 100 for 2011 is largely unchanged although there is some jockeying for position in the top 10 where Cambridge is ranked first …
Or better not to build at all? The Chronicle has an entertaining piece about an unusual problem faced by Belmont University: The institution’s board of directors recently approved $48-million for a five-story building wi…
More true crime on campus Not all of the challenges faced by our ever-vigilant Security team are down to people. Some involve animals of one kind or another (albeit sometimes with human involvement): 2020 Report of a bir…
The Great Brain Race by Ben Wildavsky I read this some months ago but, inexplicably, failed to note the fact. Wildavsky is a clear, cogent and persuasive writer. He provides a good review of the global higher education p…
There is only one place to go for the A level pictures everyone expects, namely It’s Sexy A-Levels!: A blog exploring the hypothesis that UK newspapers believe that only attractive girls in low cut tops do A-Levels. It i…