HEFCE “fears government’s controlling hand”

Government control issues for HEFCE According to a recent report in Times Higher Education HEFCE still fears government's controlling hand over its budget despite its status as an "arm's-length" public body: Newly published Hefce board papers reveal internal fears about its ability to "maintain the standard of its work" and its relative independence given the …

Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything?

Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses By Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa The Chronicle carries an extract from what sounds like an extremely interesting new book. The paper reports that, drawing on survey responses, transcript data, and results from the Collegiate Learning Assessment (a standardized test taken by students …

Ranking of Colleges’ Twitter Influence

Ranking universities and social media Some entertaining nonsense in the past couple of weeks on ranking university use of twitter etc. Chris Sexton beat me to this with her posting on this topic which covers more than I will. The fact that people are producing league tables of this stuff shows it already matters but …

Charity Commission rules and universities’ charitable status

Possible threat to universities' charitable status Interesting opinion piece from Pinsent Masons on how Charity Commission rules could threaten universities' charitable status. Universities are not like schools, for any number of reasons. One reason, though, will be vital in universities' coming battle to retain their charitable status: you don't need to go to university to …

Lawrence on University College Nottingham

A controversial piece from D H Lawrence More of Lawrence on Nottingham is available here but this entertaining piece is a highlight. Not exactly what you'd want to use in promotional material though. 'Nottingham's New University' in Pansies (1929) In Nottingham, that dismal town where I went to school and college, they've built a new …

True Crime on Campus – Best of 2010

True Crime on Campus - best bits Started posting these (real) extracts from University Security reports earlier in 2010. There really is an endless list of this stuff and some of my favourites from the past year appear below. All credit to colleagues in Security who really do put up with an enormous amount of …

Australian review of student visa requirements

Australia seems to have realised that student recruitment matters Times Higher carries an interesting piece on changes to student visa arrangements in Australia. Universities in Australia have welcomed the "timely" decision by the country's federal government to review its student-visa system in light of the recent collapse in demand from overseas students. Ministers announced the …

Universities ‘scared of private sector’

Oh no we're not Some festive cheer from politics.co.uk. The analysis here is somewhat overstating the case though: Massive efficiency savings which could drive down costs in higher education are only possible if university managers get over their suspicion of the private sector, Policy Exchange has claimed. A report by the centre-right thinktank's Alex Massey …

New Green World University Ranking

University of Indonesia produces its GreenMetric World University Ranking The recently published table has Berkeley in first place and the University of Nottingham in second. From the press release: As one of leading University in Asia, University of Indonesia come up with its new innovation in effort to build sustainable environment within its campus through …