Now students can study football

I've posted before on various degree courses which sound a bit, well, bonkers. The Daily Mail loves this stuff and gets very excited when something like a degree in footy comes along: The finer points of the offside rule are not on the curriculum. But a Championship club is offering its expertise in other aspects …

Universities spending millions on ‘inadequate’ websites

Money down the drain? A report in the Telegraph highlights significant spending by universities on website redesigns which seems to deliver less than spectacular results: Using Freedom of Information legislation the Telegraph discovered eight examples of universities spending between £100,000 and £280,000 on one-off website redesigns, as much as five times higher than the average …

Simulation software for determining ranking strategy

Tool to improve rankings Times Higher Education carries an entertaining story about a handy tool designed to help universities determine the best way to improve their league table rankings: Any doubts that world university rankings are influencing institutions’ strategic thinking are likely to be dispelled by news that academics in Taiwan have developed a tool …

The Work Foundation: interesting acquisition

Work Foundation thinktank declared insolvent and sold Unfortunate situation for the Work Foundation. However, things do seem to have turned out reaonably well according to the Guardian. The Work Foundation, which bills itself as "the leading independent authority on work and its future", announced today that it had been acquired by Lancaster University. The move …

Free books for freshers

Persuading freshers to read Last year St Andrews gave a novel to all freshers to get them reading, discussing and engaging with each other. This year, according to theBookseller.com, the scheme seems to have expanded: Nearly 18,000 freshers across five UK universities have been given copies of a winning or shortlisted Man Booker novel for …

True Crime on Campus §5

True Crime on Campus The fifth instalment in a series of items extracted from university security reports. These are all real reports and highlight the varied nature of the challenges faced by our indefatigable security staff: 0845 Request for Security to attend an office in Trent Building. A member of staff had a pigeon in …

Some surprising views on the internationalisation of Higher Education

Why institutions think internationalisation is important Really interesting piece in the Chronicle by Francisco Marmolejo on the Internationalization of Higher Education. Those of us involved in the internationalization of higher education rely on a series of assumptions that are often not supported by data or evidence. For instance, we believe that internationalization is not only …

Another daft course? Sociology goes Gaga

Or is this a case of academia at the cutting edge of contemporary culture? Have posted before about slightly unusual programmes, including a zombie course at the University of Baltimore. Anyway, this time it's Lady Gaga at the University of South Carolina. According to a story in the Washington Post also picked up by the …

Restricting international staff recruitment by universities

The problems with the Tier 2 cap The THE recently carried a story about the problems being caused by the cap on immigration from non-EU countries which is particularly affecting universities: The UK Border Agency has given each university a quota on recruitment from non-European Union countries under Tier 2 of the points-based immigration system, …