Europe’s “best universities”

CHE Excellence Ranking 2009 A league table that isn't actually a league table: via "European best universities" - ZEIT ONLINE The CHE Excellence Ranking compares a selected group of European universities for each subject. Find the most interesting places in Europe for doing your master’s or doctoral degree! For seven different subjects a group of …

“Old-fashioned universities letting students down”

Moaners not Maoists According to the Guardian, David Willetts has said that old-fashioned universities are letting students down: Universities are badly failing students with unfit teaching and old-fashioned methods and will have to radically modernise lectures and facilities if they want to raise fees, according to the Conservatives' spokesman on higher education. David Willetts told …

Special Collections as Laboratories

Special Collections as Laboratories Interesting post from the Chronicle of Higher Education It's a report on a recent forum which looked at the opportunities for using special collections to teach students about the possibilities and principles of research: "Such collections should be put to use as laboratories where students work hands-on with primary documents, incorporate …

Economist MBA league table

Full-time MBA ranking from The Economist. The latest FT MBA league table has been published and it includes very strong representation from European Schools: 1 IESE Business School - University of Navarra Spain 2 IMD - International Institute for Management Development Switzerland 3 California at Berkeley, University of - Haas School of Business United States …

Robert Southey on university life

Letters of Robert Southey Interesting news item about the publication of the letters of Robert Southey, one time poet laureate. Letter 60 includes a couple of interesting observations on higher education: I know nothing so unpleasant as leaving the friends we love & — yet such is the state of society that life is hardly …

On the OpenCourseWare Consortium

Interesting development: the OpenCourseWare Consortium It's not entirely unique but the approach is a bit different and extremely worthwhile: An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the …

Most Cited Institutions: 1999-2009

A league table of the most cited institutions 1999-2009 has been published by ScienceWatch.com The list is dominated by US universities with 14 entries and only three UK entries and one each from Germany, Canada and Japan. Harvard is, inevitably, top: These institutions all produce a high volume of papers resulting in extremely high citation …

Push UK university league table

Apologies for the delay... Old news really but earlier this year Push published a league table based on some rather idiosyncratic criteria: Financial indicators Job prospects Academic indicators Ease of entry and demand Student life indicators The results are a little surprising perhaps but certainly a bit different from the mainstream newspaper tables: 1 Lampeter, …

UK universities in 2009 THE world league table

Follow up to earlier post on the latest THE world league table. There are 18 UK universities in the latest THE/QS world university league table with most improving their positions and Leeds being a new entry: 2 Cambridge 4 UCL 5= Oxford 5= Imperial 20= Edinburgh 23 King’s 26 Manchester 34 Bristol 58 Warwick 66 …

Latest 2009 world university league table rankings from THE

Latest 2009 world rankings from THE and QS The University world rankings have been published in THE. The top 25 is as follows: 2009 1 Harvard University (1 in 2008) 2 University of Cambridge (3) 3 Yale University (2) 4 University College London (7) 5= Imperial College London (6) 5= University of Oxford (4) 7 …

Princeton curbing grade inflation

Princeton has been tackling grade inflation According to a news article from the University the proportion of A grades awarded has fallen from 47.9% in 2002-03 to 39.7% in 2008-09 following the introduction of a new grading policy: The policy, adopted by the faculty in April 2004 to curb grade inflation across the University, sets …

Ig Nobel awards

This year's Ig Nobel awards Report in the Guardian about this year's Ig Nobel awards. A couple are rather good: Veterinary medicine prize Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson at Newcastle University's school of agriculture share the award for the groundbreaking discovery that giving cows names such as Daisy increases their milk yield. "It's the highlight …

‘Radical change’ is needed to reassure public on standards says THE

Follow up to earlier post on this topic. According to Times Higher Education: "'Radical change' is needed to reassure public on standards". External examiners would be interviewed by inspection teams and universities would give a clear indication of the number of hours they expect students to study under plans to boost public confidence in the …

External Examiner review (and quality and standards)

Universities UK is to undertake a review of external examining A press release from Universities UK gives some background to the recently announced review of external examiners: In his keynote speech at the Universities UK Annual Conference, President Professor Steve Smith announced that UUK, together with GuildHE and in collaboration with agencies such as the …