Alan’s farewell

Alan's farewell - a few slides and a really special photograph

Crisis communications: ask the lawyers first

Interesting views from a conference of education lawyers in the USA as reported in the Chroncicle. Specific comments, in a post-Virginia Tech context, included: Avoid email "Those e-mail messages always come back to haunt you," Wendy S. White, a vice president and general counsel at the University of Pennsylvania, said at the annual conference of …

When is a chaplain not a chaplain?

Answer: When s/he is a 'Life-Skills Assistant' Iowa State Mulls a 'Life-Skills Assistant,' Not a Chaplain reports the Chronicle Iowa State University’s Athletics Council has approved a plan to hire a “volunteer life-skills assistant” to provide religious counseling to players on the football team, in a way that officials said differs from the work of …

“Dysfunctional” universities

Extract from an article in the Chronicle India's Prime Minister Assails Universities as Below Average and 'Dysfunctional' India's prime minister revealed on Friday that almost two-thirds of the nation's universities and 90 percent of its degree-granting colleges are rated as below average and that university curricula are typically not synchronized with the needs of employers …

Honorary degree not revoked

A story in the Chronicle which follows up an earlier post on this topic University of Massachusetts trustees have voted to rebuke Robert G. Mugabe but not to rescind the honorary degree UMass presented to the Zimbabwean president in 1986. According to The Boston Globe, the trustees agreed that Mr. Mugabe has presided over the …

Revolting people

Writing about Revolts. A website overseen by Professor Philip Cowley from Nottingham (he of frequent media comments on these matters) which offers the following: This is an academic research project looking at the way MPs and peers vote. It will be (or at least aims to be) useful for journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and members of …

Brightest of tomorrow’s students don’t understand fees

Another shock story from the Education Guardian on fees: A study published today Pure Potential, an independent campaign group which aims to increase access to university, shows that 75% of bright Year 12 state school students feel they do not understand university tuition fees. This is 12% more than last year. The survey shows that …

International fees “vastly inflated”?

An entertaining story in the Education Guardian Foreign students charged hugely inflated tuition fees, survey reveals Universities and colleges in the UK charge international students vastly inflated fees to study at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, according to new figures compiled exclusively for EducationGuardian.co.uk. The Royal Veterinary College, Imperial College London and Oxford University charge …

An interesting new take on student support

See this service which will be launched in September: Academic Support Ltd I find it difficult to extract many positives from this (beyond grudging praise for web-based entrepreneurs) but can easily think of a whole series of concerns. Not least of which is that, however you dress it up, the qualifications expected of the tutors …

Student housing cliche city

The Guardian has story on buy-to-let and studentification in Nottingham No danger of a hackneyed reference to the city or a balanced assessment of the impact institutions make here: Nottingham's forest of housing despair Landlords aiming to make a fast buck out of a huge population of student tenants are taking a heavy toll on …

Exporting “knowledge services”: we all deserve an award for this

The Guardian, reporting on a publication from the Work Foundation, comments that the UK's exporting of "knowledge services", which includes universities delivering courses to international students, is outstanding the UK sells more knowledge services - which includes the money foreign students spend on British universities - as a proportion of total exports than any other …

No more fees in Scotland: how relaxing

The minority SNP administration is set to scrap the fees paid by Scottish students (in Scotland) with the support of the LibDems (who were party to the introduction of fees). It will be interesting to see what the consequences of this might be for funding Scottish institutions. It is perhaps slightly surprising that Universities Scotland …

Facebook-ish: for the slightly older generation

See the E2 site here Am slightly ashamed to admit that I have never heard of Elon University but they seem to have done something mildly interesting here. If you look at the sample profile (bottom left) you get an idea of the Facebookishness of the project. They are claiming some success though.

Graduation – Harvard Style

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1800674,00.html Although I've not actually seen one yet, my guess is that our Graduation ceremonies actually have a lot going for them – better than this description of Harvard last year in any case. The morning graduation exercises were held in a steady drizzle, with hundreds of umbrellas making it impossible …

Handy collection of University podcasts

Follow up to earlier post The interesting Open Culture blog has a very useful assemblage of University related podcasts. Overwhelmingly North American but helps to remind us how much catching up is required. See the post here.