Another dumb ranking

The universities which will make you a millionaire!

Mail Online publishes this insightful piece on the “graduate rich list” which shows you “where to study to make your millions”:

It’s not a real note

A new graduate ‘rich list’ has revealed the universities where students are most likely to become multi-millionaires.

Oxford comes top after producing 401 alumni worth £20million or more, and Cambridge is in second place with 361 – but Cambridge has the most billionaires.

The average super-rich graduate from Cambridge has a fortune of £169million, more than twice as much as Oxford’s ultra-wealthy ex-students.

The full list with some tasty examples is as follows:

1) Oxford - 401 super-rich graduates worth an average £83m each – alumni include Monty Python comedian Michael Palin

2) Cambridge - 361, £169m – including Borat actor Sacha Baron Cohen

3) LSE - 273, £84m – including Rolling Stones singer Sir Mick Jagger

4) Imperial - 127, £67m – including Queen guitarist Brian May

5) London Business School - 106, £99m – including Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry

6) Manchester - 102, £22m – including former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy

7) UCL - 99, £29m – including comic and actor Ricky Gervais

8) Nottingham - 92, £22m – including head of MI5 Sir John Sawers

9) Edinburgh - 80, £52m – including Olympic cyclist Sir Chris Hoy

10) Birmingham - 68, £69m – including Manchester United CEO David Gill

Well, it’s one way to help with that UCAS application.

Yet another ranking

This time it’s an alumni ranking

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on this new player in the US college rankings:

If you had it to do all over again, would you choose to attend your alma mater? Do you think the education you received there was a good value? How much money do you make? Oh, and are you happy?

The newest player in the college-rankings game has asked such questions of more than 42,000 college graduates. Called the Alumni Factor, the new venture has released a college guide based largely on the opinions of those who’ve earned bachelor’s degrees from one of 177 institutions.

U.S. News & World Report’s popular rankings tell you a lot about who comes through a college’s gates; the Alumni Factor’s rankings were designed to capture who emerges at the other end of the enrollment cycle. The former relies, in part, on the opinions of outsiders to rate a given college; the latter relies on the opinions of people who, presumably, know the place well.

“We want to pierce the bubble of reputation,” says the introduction to the Alumni Factor’s guide, “to understand how graduates actually perform post-graduation—and hear what they have to say about the job their college did to prepare them.”

Although the nation’s shelves are already full—perhaps too full—of college guides, the Alumni Factor’s timing, at least, seems impeccable. Today’s students and parents are asking more questions about outcomes, about the success and salaries of an institution’s graduates.

According to the blurb the Alumni Factor research “listened to the people who’ve been overlooked in popular college rankings”, ie the Alumni. Looking at the sample reports on colleges on The Alumni Factor website the ratings do look pretty comprehensive, covering actual outcomes–career success, financial success, and graduates’ happiness:

 

The weaknesses of the project seem to me to be its limited coverage, with only 177 institutions covered, and the fact that it is a monthly subscription service. With so many other guides and rankings it’s not clear why you would pay monthly for access to this data. And, as noted in relation to the UK in the previous post, there really isn’t an information deficit in higher education. Suspect though there will be something like this in the UK before long.

 

The University of Nottingham at the Olympics

As has previously been noted here the University of Nottingham is very keen on the Olympics:

The Aspire sculpture becomes the Olympic Torch for the day

Six University of Nottingham graduates have bagged Olympic medals for Team GB over the past 20 years, making it the UK’s 7th most successful university at the Olympics.

To put this in context, 80 countries have never won an Olympic medal, while another 41 (including former nations) have won fewer than four, according to Wikipedia.

Our recent success has come on the water. Flat water canoeist Tim Brabants picked up a gold and a bronze in Beijing, adding to the bronze he’d won at Sydney in 2000, during a break from his degree in Medicine.

In 2009, Tim received an honorary degree from the University and an MBE. He’s looking to defend his Olympic title after securing his place for Team GB in the K1 1,000m event.

Tim Brabants and David Florence

The University’s reputation on the water is secured by three more Olympic medalists. Gareth Marriott won Britain’s first Olympic canoeing medal with a silver in the Canadian Singles Class at Barcelona in 1992, and Campbell Walsh secured silver in the K1 event at Athens 2004. And London 2012 gives David Florence the chance to go one better than the silver he bagged in the C1 category in Beijing four years ago.

More details of these and other Olympic connections, including pieces on cultural connections, one of our Paralympic hopefuls and some of the stars of the future, can be found in the latest edition of Exchange magazine.

Looking to match the success of one of our Honorary Graduates, Rebecca Adlington, in winning a medal are the following Nottingam alumni and students:

* Tim Brabants (Medicine 1999): Men’s Kayak Singles (K1) 1,000m, Finals — Eton Dorney, Monday 6 and Wednesday 8 August
* Johny Akinyemi (Philosophy and Theology 2010): Men’s Kayak Singles (K1) 1,000m — Eton Dorney, Sunday 29 July and Wednesday 1 August
* David Florence (Mathematical Physics 2005): Men’s Canoe Slalom (C1) — Eton Dorney, Sunday 29 July and Tuesday 31 July and Men’s Canoe Doubles (C2) — Eton Dorney, Monday 30 July and Thursday 2 August
* Etienne Stott and Tim Baillie (both Mechanical Engineering 2000): Men’s Canoe Doubles (C2) — Eton Dorney, Monday 30 July and Thursday 2 August
* Rob Moore (Economics 2003), Nick Catlin (History 2010) and Harry Martin (Economics 2015): Men’s Hockey — Riverbank Arena, Monday 30 July to Saturday 11 August
* Anne Panter (Mathematics and Economics 2009): Women’s Hockey — Riverbank Arena, Sunday 29 July to Friday 10 August.
* Chris Bartley (Biology 2005): Rowing Men’s Four — Eton Dorney, Monday 30 July to Saturday 4 August.
* Olivia Whitlam (Environmental Science 2006): Rowing Women’s Eight — Eton Dorney, Sunday 29 July — Thursday 2 August.

Very best of luck to them all.

Nottingham Potential – a launch and an opening

Helping young people to reach their true potential

I was delighted to be at an excellent event to mark the launch of Nottingham Potential and the formal opening of the IntoUniversity Nottingham West centre. It’s a major programme and a central component of the University’s widening participation strategy which has the aim of helping young people to reach their true potential. A full statement on the launch is here but in summary:

An ambitious new programme will help some of the most deprived young people in the East Midlands to reach university.

Nottingham Potential represents a major investment in the future of the primary and secondary-age school pupils — a multimillion pound commitment to help break down the barriers to higher education.

Delivered by The University of Nottingham in partnership with education charity IntoUniversity, Nottingham Potential will provide new learning centres in the community to support pupils from the ages of 7-18, including one-to-one support with homework, literacy and numeracy, coursework, exams, GCSE options and A-levels, careers advice and applications to university.

Nottingham Potential, as reported by the Nottingham Post, is supported by a major donation from Nottingham alumnus, David Ross, seen here at the launch:

The Post notes that Nottingham Potential aims to break down the barriers to higher education in some of the most deprived parts of the City.

Mr Ross, who is the co-founder of phone firm Carphone Warehouse, has his own charity, the David Ross Foundation, which works with children in schools in deprived areas.

He said: “The David Ross Foundation’s partnerships with schools in deprived areas has shown us that in order to raise young people’s aspirations then the earlier we start, the better.

“Our focus is on working with children at an early age to show them that a university education is a door very much open to them.

“Talent and ability is abundant in these schools, and in many different fields – academic, artistic, sporting and many more.

“However, without the right kind of encouragement and support young people may not appreciate the opportunities that they can seize.”

In addition to Mr Ross’ donation, the university is spending £16 million a year on the project by 2015-16.

It’s a really exciting programme and the collaboration with IntoUniversity, the charity’s first outside London, will make a real difference to educational opportunities in Nottingham.

The initial base opened in the Hope Centre, Broxtowe Estate, yesterday.

Advice for prospective students – quantity and quality

High quality advice and guidance is key for delivering access

An interesting piece by Tessa Stone in the Times Higher Education on the importance of clear, impartial and high quality advice for potential university students. I’d agree with a lot of what Tessa says:

So, the schools that already do this well will continue to give their students the advantage that sound advice and guidance makes. For those without access to such advice, the gulf will widen further. Universities provide masses of advice already, yet coverage is not universal and the market imperative risks seeing focused recruitment trump broader outreach work. This is a risk we must guard against.

You would expect someone like me, running a charity that seeks to connect, inform and inspire more people to achieve their potential through education, to argue strongly in favour of maintaining the broadest possible approach. But in my experience, most of the staff who have tirelessly delivered outreach over the past decade, much of it altruistic, also share my concern.

Silver bullets there are none, but one smart approach that some of Brightside’s university partners are taking is to provide initiatives that are relevant to a number of priorities. We provide an e-mentoring service that universities (and others) can embed into their outreach activities – making ongoing mentoring support available beyond the summer school or shadowing scheme, and generally being the thread that binds intermittent, face-to-face activities. Our university partners also see this as a way to aid retention and success and promote employability (recent graduates and local employers mentor second and third years).

This is just one example, but whatever form such collaboration takes – and however much universities may rail against yet again having to make up for problems for which they are not responsible – it is crucial that it happens. We must respond to the serious and growing need for clear, impartial information and advice about the system. If we do not, it is not clear who will.

Unfortunately, the Government’s approach seems to be largely pinned on simply providing additional information for potential students, primarily via the Key Information Set or KIS:

The problem with KIS is that is just provides more information in what is already a very crowded bazaar- it will not necessarily help applicants make sensible informed decisions (and it inevitably adds to the regulatory burden on universities, but that’s another story). The latest addition to this very busy picture was recently reported in the Observer, which noted that Which? Magazine intended to enter the market for provision of information to students. In order for applicants to make properly informed decisions there really is a need for human intervention.

Nottingham Potential, part of the University of Nottingham’s Impact Campaign, will, working in partnership with Into University, address just the issue identified by Tessa:

The University has a long tradition of working with young people, teachers, schools and colleges across Nottingham and the East Midlands to raise aspirations and support achievements.

Despite changes in funding and fee structures for the higher education sector, the University is clear about the direction and commitment needed to improve access for those who aspire, and have the ability, to pursue higher education.

Excellence in education and equality of access and opportunity are guiding principles in our strategic plan. These principles are also central to Nottingham Potential. Through it, we will create a distinct and high-profile pathway to higher education for the most deprived young people of our region.

Nottingham Potential will expand the University’s work with children of primary age, from as young as Year 2 (age 7), through the transition to secondary school and beyond, by providing a pathway that will support achievement and raise aspirations.

Nottingham Potential is unique in providing long-term support tailored to young people with educational ambitions. This can only be achieved in partnership with families, schools, teachers, community groups, and by drawing upon the extraordinary commitment and expertise shown by the University’s students and staff.

The University will deliver Nottingham Potential on our campuses and in satellite centres within three of the region’s most deprived communities. With 24 new staff strengthening teams, the number of opportunities for contact will almost double in five years, from 28,000 in 2011 to almost 50,000. This will make the University a positive and accessible presence in the lives of the region’s most deprived young people.

Nottingham Potential will make a real and lasting difference in our region. But the fundamental problem in advancing this agenda further is one of scale – there are around 3.25m secondary students in 4,500 secondary schools (non-private) in England – our universities, no matter how hard we try, are not going to reach all of them – it requires something more joined up and government-led to do that. There are no silver bullets and just providing more information is not the answer. It’s about quality AND quantity.

Nottingham Advantage

Impact Campaign: Nottingham Advantage

Another update on the Impact Campaign which has launched this week at the University of Nottingham.

This theme, Nottingham Advantage, is one which I think is particularly important. On this site you can see a nice video, fronted by Vicky Mann who heads up the Nottingham Advantage Award, all about how the University is helping our graduates who need more than academic knowledge and skills to stand out from the crowd in today’s competitive global job market.

Will you help promote the employability of our graduates?

The issue

Competition in the global employment market is fiercer than ever. Employers expect much more from prospective graduate recruits than a good degree. Taking part in extra-curricular activities encourages students to develop a range of skills, such as leadership, organisation, communication and teamwork – great preparation for the world of work and a way to stand out from the crowd.

Our solution

The Nottingham Advantage Award offers students the chance to develop the competencies, learning and evaluation skills that employers seek in graduates. Launched in 2008, the Award is voluntary and is open to students at our UK, China and Malaysia campuses.

Students choose modules, which focus on developing key attributes, such as oral and written communication, teamwork, self management and learner autonomy, problem solving and critical thinking, commercial awareness, information technology and numeracy, environmental citizenship and employability and a global perspective.

The emphasis upon reflective practice is built into all modules and allows students to develop greater self-awareness and techniques for self-improvement. Over 75% of the modules are delivered in collaboration with employers, helping students to associate academic learning with the professional context of the global employment market.

Our impact

The Nottingham Advantage Award provides formal recognition of the student’s employability skills, promoting them as flexible, adaptable employees of the future to support their transition into the global job market.

What will your Impact be?

Supporting the Nottingham Advantage Award will have a genuine impact on the success of our students in today’s fiercely competitive global job market. Do support the Impact Campaign.

Impact : Academic Excellence

The Impact Campaign at the University of Nottingham – Delivering Academic Excellence

 

A previous post reported on the launch of the Impact Campaign. Now we’re into a bit more of the detail about why the campaign is important and how our academic excellence has been constantly enriched by philanthropy. Part of Impact: The Nottingham Campaign is about how we can extend our academic excellence through the funding of new academic posts that will enhance research, teaching and the transfer of knowledge.

New funding will make a tangible and lasting difference to our work. Two examples where philanthropy could enhance the academic excellence are in the creation of new Chairs – a Chair in Business History and a Chair in Jewish Studies:

Chair in Business History

The Issue

Historical case studies inform us about today’s business environment, in terms of dealing with crises (financial and otherwise), networking and environmental impact. The UK and East Midlands have many under-used sources, and the University wishes to create a dedicated resource to address this.

Our Solution

The creation of a Chair in Business History and development of a co-ordinated research group around it will provide expert leadership and momentum in drawing together and driving forward existing and new historical research and teaching at Nottingham. This will broaden our understandings of business history in a regional, national and international context.

Our Impact

Through independent and collaborative research and teaching, the Chair in Business History will drive forward new research on the history of business, and disseminate that knowledge to have an impact on understanding today’s – and the future – business environment.

 

 

Chair in Jewish Studies

The Issue

The University has consistently been a leader in the study of Christianity and Christian theology, and Islamic Studies has for more than a quarter of a century been an area of teaching and research here. Jewish Studies has had a less consistent presence. The University wishes to strengthen and ensure continuity of its teaching and research in this area.

The Solution

The creation of a Chair in Jewish Studies and the development of a co-ordinated research group around it will provide the leadership and momentum to draw together and drive forward world-class research and teaching in Jewish Studies at Nottingham.

Our Impact

By attracting a top flight scholar of Jewish Studies to a Chair in one of the UK’s best-known and most dynamic Theology and Religious Studies Departments, we will secure teaching and research in this area, and enhance the profile of Jewish Studies in Britain as a whole.

These are really important developments for the University. More details can be found here on Academic Excellence at the University of Nottingham. Please do support the Impact Campaign.

Honorary degree anyone?

More graduation fun

The Guardian invites us to consider this year’s honorary degree recipients:

It’s about this time of year that academics start digging out their robes and dusting off their mortar boards, as thousands of students prepare to receive their degrees at graduation ceremonies across the country. Accompanying them will be a hand-selected elite deemed worthy enough to obtain an honorary degree.

This year’s crop of honorary grads is a diverse group, from True Blood star Alexander Skarsgård, who receives his from Leeds Metropolitan University having studied there for six months before dropping out, Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson who’s picked up an honorary doctorate for his contribution to music from Queen Mary’s University in London and Jarvis Cocker, who picked one up from his Alma Mater Central Saint Martins. Even the bloke behind the meerkat adverts, Darren Walsh, got one from the University of the Creative Arts in Farnham.

As if that weren’t enough there are many others this year:

Jennifer Saunders – Edge Hill
Jeff Beck – Sussex
Kenny Dalglish – Ulster
Fiona Phillips – Cardiff
Lee Child – DMU
Patrick Stewart – UEA
Ray Clemence – Lincoln
Donald Sinden – Kent
John Barrowman – RSAMD
Armando Ianucci – Glasgow
Duffy – Bangor
Roger Black – Surrey
Jon Snow – Liverpool

For many of these celebs, this is their first experience of picking up an honorary. Bus as noted in an earlier post on this topic, some people have more than others. And Desmond Tutu, collecting an honorary degree from the University of Leicester this month, has around 50 of them.

Some other recent(ish) recipients of note:

Kim Cattrall – Liverpool JMU
James May – Lancaster
Omar Sharif – Hull
Orlando Bloom – Kent
Ken Dodd – Liverpool Hope
Jack Dee – Winchester
Alan Shearer – Newcastle
Pam St Clement – Plymouth

It’s a star-studded collection. Sadly no place for the Chuckle Brothers this year though.

White Paper inspiration from the US?

A somewhat different approach to cost savings in the new fees regime

Not sure if this was a source of inspiration for the White Paper. It looks like something of a blue print for efficient management at the bargain basement end of the new private providers (but perhaps not for the New College of the Humanities). The model presented here from Professor Vance Fried and published by the American Enterprise Insititute for Public Policy Research has a number of what look like helpful pointers for the new private providers:

“Higher education insiders sometimes point to the increasing cost of auxiliary services like student housing and big-time athletics as a major cause of large tuition increases. This is a red herring,” notes Fried. “Football, good food, and hot tubs are not the reason for runaway college spending. Rather, the root cause is the high cost of performing the instructional, research, and public-service missions of the undergraduate university.”

To identify areas ripe for cost savings, Fried creates a provocative experiment: what would it cost to educate undergraduates at a hypothetical college built from scratch? Fried concludes that undergraduate colleges should consider five major cost-cutting strategies:

1. Eliminate or separately fund research and public service

2. Optimize class size

3. Eliminate or consolidate low-enrollment programs

4. Eliminate administrator bloat

5. Downsize extracurricular student activity programs

“Rather than focusing only on the big-ticket items that tend to dominate debates about college costs, Fried argues that the real levers for increasing efficiency include rethinking student-faculty ratios, eliminating under-enrolled programs, and trimming unnecessary administrative positions,” explains Andrew P. Kelly, AEI research fellow and editor of the Future of American Education Project. “His recommendations are a must-read as states look to rein in college costs.”

There is clearly a strong ideological undercurrent here. And the points about ‘administrator bloat’ and drastically reducing student activities appear particularly narrow-sighted and significantly at odds with the White Paper notion of putting students at the heart of things. So perhaps extremely cheap and not very cheerful is not the way forward after all.

Trouble with names

Or the importance of having a proper naming policy

So could it happen here? Fascinating story this about Tsinghua University naming a teaching building after a donor. Except the donor is a clothes brand:

China’s prestigious Tsinghua University has triggered heated debates one month after its 100th anniversary of founding as it has named one teaching building after a well-known clothes brand.

The university came to the spotlight on Tuesday after a picture of the building’s new name was posted online. People blamed the university for “selling itself” and the incident was labeled as the “falling of the spirit of universities,” while others said it was normal for campus buildings to be named after a donor.

The No.4 teaching building of Tsinghua, built in 1987, is dedicated with shining Chinese and English characters of “Jeanswest Building,” following a line saying that Jeanswest, as a leading company of casual clothes, has contributed its share to the nation’s education.

So, Jeanswest Building does sound a bit better than the No.4 teaching building. But not much. And it does beg questions about how far a university might go in offering naming rights in return for a decent donation. Whilst the University of Poppleton has probably led the way in the recent past (actually I’m guessing it has a number of buildings named after popular pork-based products), might we expect the Confused.com learning resources building or the Kwik Save Student Services Centre at a UK campus someday soon?

Stanford Adds Alumni Interviews

One of those big differences between US and UK universities

Inside Higher Ed carries a piece on alumni interviews:

Alumni interviews have for decades been part of the admissions process at elite private colleges. Their role has sometimes frustrated applicants, and left them guessing about strategies. Over the years, the process has also annoyed many alumni.

"Enough about you, let me tell you about when I was a student here..."

A 2002 article in The New York Times quoted a Cornell University alumnus talking about how all of the candidates seem the same: “If I see another valedictorian, I may throw up.” And Cornell doesn’t even call the sessions “interviews,” preferring the term “contact meeting” to stress that the alumni aren’t deciding who gets in. Still, alumni interviews are the norm at elite colleges — with a more common complaint of alumni of late, as documented recently by Bloomberg, being that they don’t have enough influence to make the interviews worth their time.

So, Stanford has joined in after standing apart from others for some time. It’s really just not clear why.

But could it happen in the UK? Mass applications would effectively prevent this as they have already killed off interviews in most subjects and institutions. But even if interviewing was still a common feature, would you involve alumni in the process?

Should more alumni take governance roles?

A new report on governance: “University governance – questions for a new era”

This is an interesting pamphlet from HEPI written by Professor Malcolm Gillies who has clearly been on the receiving end of a fair bit of governance. One of his core suggestions which is picked up by Times Higher Education is that alumni should play a bigger part in governance.

University governance must be overhauled to address the problem of “dispassionate” independent board members who protect their own interests at times of crisis rather than those of the institutions they serve, according to a new study.

Under changes proposed by the review, alumni would be handed a central role as government reforms necessitate a move towards governors that have a direct interest in their universities’ well-being.

The Higher Education Policy Institute report on the future of governing bodies, authored by Malcolm Gillies, vice-chancellor of London Metropolitan University, says that alumni have the “greatest lifelong stake in the institution’s reputation and its protection”.

Professor Gillies argues that the old arm’s-length “common-sense” approach to governance detailed in sector guides needs to be updated, as independent board members lack the incentive to act in tough times.

One of the arguments in favour of this proposal is that student/alumni funding will, for many institutions, become the single biggest source of their income in the near future and therefore it is right that they play a greater role in the governance of their university. However, there are some possible pitfalls with this approach. Whilst the commitment of alumni to their university undoubtedly ensures they are ready and willing to contribute in all sorts of ways, they may also bring all sorts of baggage with them from their student days which might be unhelpful. In addition, their views on certain policy issues may be excessively coloured by their own student experiences or they may tend to have a slightly rose-tinted view of the past which leads them to be somewhat averse to necessary change. Alumni can though bring a distinctive perspectve and, as always with governance it’s about getting the right balance.

One other particular point in the report is the suggestion that government, because it is providing less funding, will be less interested in university governance and will have a reduced legitimacy. I’m really not sure that this will be the case as, for all of the rhtoric, government inevitably and inexorably seeks to regulate and direct higher education more and more, regardless of the level of funding it provides.

A timely report though.

Valentine’s special: “Top 10 Most Loved Schools”

A top 10 of colleges with the highest percentages of alumni donors according to US News and World Report:

Webb Institute 70.9

Carleton College 61.3

Princeton University 60.3

Middlebury College 60.1

Amherst College 59.5

Williams College 57.6

Centre College 56.7 4

Indiana Institute of Technology 55.1

Davidson College 54

Thomas Aquinas College 52.5

Although these don’t give an indication of the value of donations this does represent an extraordinary level of engagement of alumni. Especially when you think that for most UK universities the figure is below 2%. These really are well-loved institutions.

University Targets Overweight Students

Students have to take exercise in order to graduate

Students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania are upset about a school rule requiring overweight students to take an exercise course in order to graduate. The rule applies to students with a body mass index above 30. James DeBoy, chair of the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Lincoln University, says the school officials believe that its their responsibility to alert students to the dangers of obesity.

via Pa. University Targets Overweight Students : NPR

So, is it discrimination? Nanny state-ism gone mad? Or benign concern for student health and well-being?

The story also appears in the Guardian, which reports that:

The course includes walking, cycling, aerobics and lessons in healthy diet. Students who fail to take it will not graduate, no matter how good their academic performance has been.

and also notes that, somewhat paradoxically:

Despite having introduced its controversial policy, it still allows KFC and the Grill to operate inside the campus, serving up double crunch sandwiches and fried mozzarella sticks to all-too-appreciative students.

Changes in university email?

From the Chronicle: Are College E-Mail Addresses on the Way Out?

A report from Educause on IT issues in higher education suggests that provision of university email addresses for students may be a thing of the past.

It found, among other things, that in 2008 nearly 10 percent of associate, baccalaureate, and master’s institutions as well as 25 percent of doctoral institutions were considering putting an end to student e-mail addresses because so many students were already using personal e-mail accounts. That is a large shift from
the 1 to 2 percent of institutions that were considering this in 2004. The survey also highlighted findings from IT categories like networking and security, information systems, faculty and student computing, financing and management, and organizational structure and leadership.

Whilst there may be short term savings here, there are significant challenges in maintaining accurate lists for communication purposes but, as importantly, the ability to retain connections with alumni, through life-long email addresses, is greatly compromised.