2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities: Top 20 and UK placings

2014 ARWU University World Rankings: Top 20 and UK placings It feels like a strange time to publish a world ranking but ideal holiday reading for many. Anyway, as in previous years there is not a huge amount to get excited about as this is a league table where little changes. The full rankings have been published and …

The 2014 Grant letter: another epistolary triumph

And the wait was finally over The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has written to HEFCE with the Department's annual message on funding and helpful bag of instructions. As excitement in the sector reached near fever pitch, the contents were being live-tweeted by @TimesHigherEd while everyone else waited to get hold of …

What are academic bloggers up to?

What are academic bloggers blogging about? And why? A great article for the Guardian Higher Education Network by Pat Thomson ( @ThomsonPat )  and Inger Mewburn ( @thesiswhisperer ) on bloggers in higher education. The piece is a summary of an article in a special edition of Studies in Higher Education and the longer one is well …

Dark Arts: Gothic Studies

There's a Centre for Gothic Studies. Scary.A couple of years ago I noted the launch of an MA in Horror and Transgression at the University of Derby. This followed on from posts on some other rather niche offers including  a zombie course at the University of Baltimore and a course covering Lady Gaga. Now this has all been taken …

Getting off my bike…

A rather challenging ride for a very good cause As previously noted here I faced a major cycling challenge on Sunday as part of Life Cycle 3: During the last two summers a team from the University of Nottingham led by our Vice-Chancellor cycled ridiculously long distances to raise money for good causes. The team …

Getting on my bike…

A shortish ride for a very good cause During the last two summers a team from the University of Nottingham led by our Vice-Chancellor cycled ridiculously long distances to raise money for good causes. The team did not include me and they have sensibly overlooked me again as they cycle round the capital cities of …

2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities: Top 20 and UK placings

2013 ARWU University World Rankings: Top 20 and UK placings A level results day is an interesting time to publish a world ranking but who are we to criticise. Anyway, don't get too excited as it is unlikely the bookies will be losing their shirts on this one. Here is the top 20 in full. …

More Data – Open Data

Data for all. Data.ac.uk has launched. It's a great idea for a site which is intended to provide access to lots of open data but also tools and somewhere to share ideas and approaches: This is a landmark site for academia providing a single point of contact for linked open data development. It not only …

A higher education report to remember?

Or not much of an impact? It's a month or so now since the publication of the IPPR report on securing the future of higher education in England. It was a big report based on a considerable amount of work by a group headed by Nigel Thrift. But, despite an initial flurry, it doesn't seem to …

A not entirely new university ranking

A rather citation heavy ranking from URAP (NB not UKIP). Apologies for the lateness of this but for some reason I failed to notice this league table which was published last autumn. The University Ranking by Academic Performance website has all the details but the background is as follows: University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP) …

Everything’s gone green

Some positive work on sustainable futures at the University of Nottingham. In 2012 the University of Nottingham won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development. In the citation for the award the judges noted Nottingham was a “trailblazer” for environmental best practice. Now I must admit that I used to be …

Launch of the nice university league table

New league table: nearly there. A previous post noted the imminent arrival of the all new European non-ranking ranking. Well now it seems to be nearly complete with only a year to wait until the first ranking is produced. The public launch of the 'multi-dimensional' ranking, which is intended to cover a wider range of …

Higher education funding letters: another bundle of joy

On government HE funding letters The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has written to HEFCE with the Department's annual message on funding and helpful bag of instructions. The letter sets out Government funding and priorities for HEFCE and for higher education for the second year of the new financial arrangements for higher …

The Imperfect University: Truly Transnational

There is something close to a genuinely international university Last year Andrew Stewart Coats, commenting on his appointment and the interesting plans for the new partnership between Warwick and Monash Universities, asserted that in higher education: there has been little or no globalization in how we organize ourselves; no global entity runs viable universities in …

African Universities and the Global Rankings

Should African universities be concerned with the global league tables? Inside Higher Ed has a really good piece on African universities and the impact of the international rankings. Essentially the challenge for Africa is that the global league tables use metrics which simply don't favour the continent's institutions: Any observer of higher education in Africa …