5,000 ‘soft degree courses axed’

'Staggering' reduction in numbers of degree courses Everyone's favourite source of educational critique, Mail Online, conflates several stories and comes up with some earth-shattering news. Some universities are responding to changes in student demand by discontinuing some courses: Universities have axed 5,000 degree courses in preparation for cuts in state funding and the trebling of …

International Leadership Conference: Managing Global Universities

Last week saw the second International Leadership Conference at the University of Nottingham. Building on the success of the inaugural event held in China in November 2010, the 2011 event took place at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, 30km from Kuala Lumpur. This intensive four day programme is designed for senior managers and leaders …

Junk food for league tables

Perverse incentives for misreporting the data Inside Higher Ed carries a cautionary tale about a US College Provost who misreported data to external bodies over a number of years to enhance the College's profile: Iona College acknowledged Tuesday that its former provost had, for nearly a decade, manipulated and misreported student-related data to government officials, …

A new UK university league table – based on (a few) student rankings

There's a new league table on the block Welcome to the university league table which has been influenced by student feedback from all across the United Kingdom – find the most popular university, rated by students that currently study there or have been studying there. Honest, unbiased reviews, uninfluenced by the universities themselves, that show …

Open for business

Small countries are open for higher education business A taster for a session to be delivered at next week's International Leadership Conference at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus: this piece in Times Higher Education covers the openness of some countries in relation to higher education. The article reports on a session which Janet Ilieva …

Europe as “one higher education space”

The President of Maastricht University argues in a piece for the Guardian Higher Education Network for greater European integration in higher education: Not before time, the House of Lords in the UK has announced an inquiry into European Union support for universities and student mobility. By now, the vision of a single higher-education space across …

“Topsy-turvy ranking” in social science teaching

Research which challenges some league table views of teaching quality Times Higher Education has a piece on a detailed study of teaching of Sociology at a range of instututions which has some interesting results: Teaching in universities that are usually ranked towards the bottom of higher education league tables is more consistently of a high …

Back to the future? Reverting to single-sex accommodation

Is this really the solution? Fascinating piece on Inside Higher Ed on a reversion to single sex accommodation at Catholic University: “Life is Co-Ed” has become the unofficial rallying call of the Catholic University students unhappy and unconvinced by their president’s unprecedented decision to revert all dormitories to single-sex living quarters. John Garvey, president of …

A bit of a lift

Or, beyond car parking charges (Continuing the left/elevator theme of the previous post.) Until very recently the University of Nottingham was one of only a tiny number of universities in the UK which did not charge for car parking on campus. The introduction this summer of car parking charges here at the University has not, …

True Crime on Campus §16: A series of unfortunate events

More true crime on campus: where stuff happens Unfortunate things can happen on campus. Fortunately, our unflappable Security staff are more than capable of responding to all kinds of events: 1215 Report that a pedal cyclist had fallen from his cycle outside the Pharmacy Building. Security attended. The student had been attempting to jump his …

Are US universities retreating from international ventures?

It seems there is a "new caution" for US universities overseas Seattle P-I has a piece on what looks like a slowdown in the international activities of US universities: High-profile and expensive failures of Middle East branch campuses run by Michigan State and George Mason were a wake-up call. Suffolk University recently closed a campus …

More on iPads in the classroom

Another report on experimentation with iPads Have posted before on the use of iPads on campus and for teaching and learning. An article in the Chronicle reports on some recent experiments involving iPad use in the classroom. Pepperdine University, for example, has been experimenting in a few courses, where some students are given iPads loaded …