Troops to Teachers

New directions for service leavers: but should UK be doing more? The University of Nottingham is offering extra places for for former service personnel wishing to retrain as teachers. It's an interesting development and one which has arisen as part of a government initiative: British servicemen and women who are leaving or have left the …

True Crime on Campus §20: accidents will happen

More true crime on campus: accidents happen, sometimes intentionally Accidents can happen on campus. Fortunately, our Security staff are more than capable of responding to all kinds of events. Even when some of them really aren't accidental at all: 0250 Report of a broken window at Sherwood Hall. Security attended: the window had been broken …

Commencement v Graduation

Some similarities but quite a few differences too   It's that time of year again. Well, almost. It's commencement season in the USA and will be graduation season in the UK in about six weeks or so. A couple of years ago I blogged on the issue of US v UK graduation experiences (and used …

New markets for fake qualifications

Exciting new opportunities for purveyors of fake qualificationss Earlier posts have reported on particular examples of fake university degrees including a scandal in Pakistan and the entertaining story about a dog which was awarded an MBA. Now University World News reports on the new growth area for fake qualifications: Degrees from Western universities have become …

Guardian League Table 2013: Ups and downs

New Guardian League Table for 2013 Top 20 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year's position in brackets): 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (4) LSE 4 (3) St Andrews 5 (6) Warwick 6 (5) UCL 7 (8) Durham 7 (7) Lancaster 9 (14) Bath 10 (11) Exeter 11 (9) …

International students: not an immigration issue

Students really aren't immigrants Excellent piece in a recent edition of Times Higher Education by Edward Acton. The essence of his argument is that international students make a massive contribution to the UK economy and most of them leave the UK after graduating. In other words, they really should not be considered as part of …

The Imperfect University: Massive Open Online Confusion?

The Future of HE? Or Massive Open Online Confusion? For the latest Imperfect University piece a few thoughts on a topic which is attracting considerable comment at the moment: the growth of the Massive Open Online Course or MOOC. There has been a huge amount of hype around the new models of online provision or …

A higher level of ranking?

A new higher education ranking - this time of countries U21 has published some new work on national education systems that gives the first ranking of countries which are the ‘best’ at providing higher education: The Universitas 21 ranking of national higher education systems has been developed to highlight the importance of creating a strong …

Best apps for university administrators?

Which are the best apps for administrators? This does presuppose that every university administrator is equipped with an iPad. Which is not necessarily the case. Anyway, if you are fortunate enough to be issued with an iPad in support of your administrative duties there are a number of key apps you will want to get …

Student Olympians

A different kind of league table Universities Week this year had a distinct Olympics focus: 30 April 2012: To mark the start of Universities Week 2012 (30 April – 7 May), a new report launched today reveals the statistics behind Team GB for the last twenty years. Detailed analysis of UK Olympic athletes shows that …

Is this the university of the future?

A new model. Designed by consultants Worried about the future of higher education? Concerned about the impact the new fees regime is going to have on your university? Bit nervous that everyone is talking about 'disruptive innovation' in HE without really knowing what it means? Then fret no more. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports …

The Tony Rich Lecture

The Impact of Universities on their Regions I was fortunate to attend this event last week. Richard Muir of IPPR was first to speak and drew heavily on the recent IPPR report (with a rather dodgy title): "Beyond bricks and mortar boards". Focusing largely on the local economic impact of universities he suggested that the …