A campus facilities arms race?

It's all about the aquatics apparently I've posted before about the growth of luxury student accommodation in the US. Now the Education Advisory Board has a report on what it says amounts to a recreation facilities arms race on US campuses: Auburn University has a 45-person paw-print shaped hot tub, Pensacola Christian College has a …

Chemical Reaction

Fire! Reflections on a major incident In the evening of Friday September 12 I received a call from our Deputy Head of Security to alert me to a major fire at the University's Jubilee Campus. The building ablaze was the unfinished GlaxoSmithKline Carbon Neutral Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry and, during the hours that followed, it …

The Promise of Personalized Education

Is this the future of student support? There has been a lot of talk of late about learner analytics and the potential benefits in terms of tracking student performance and identifying and intervening where they are at risk of dropping out. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story on a number of companies who …

Applying to uni via video

Better than qualifications? The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting story on the use of videos in university applications. Whilst some institutions have been encouraging students to submit videos as supporting information, it seems at least one has now gone further and is offering students the opportunity to provide them as the primary selection …

Outsourcing student recruitment

Australian colleges trust to agents Very surprised by this piece in @insidehighered which notes that agents have expanded their reach into domestic higher education recruitment in Australia: When the Australian Skills Quality Authority examined 400 college websites during last year’s marketing audit, as many as 70 turned out to belong to brokerage firms rather than …

Times and Sunday Times 2015 University League Table Top Placings

The Times and Sunday Times League Table 2015 A quick look at the top 25 in the all new Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide ranking for 2015. Full details can be found on the Sunday Times website (£). (Last year's position in brackets.) 1= (1) Cambridge 1= (2) Oxford 3 (4) St Andrews 4 (5) Imperial …

Tooled up campus security

Guns and Grenades for University Security Earlier this year I posted on the acquisition of an armoured truck by security at Ohio State University. The Chronicle of Higher Education has since discovered that other US universities have also taken advantage of the opportunity to buy surplus army kit including grenade launchers, M-16s, and armoured vehicles: …

New 2014/15 QS World University Rankings

The latest QS world league table is out Full details of the rankings can be found at the QS website. A summary of the world top 10 follows where we find MIT retaining the top spot for a third consecutive year but really not a lot to grab the headlines here: Global top ten 1 …

Excess Baggage

Luxury Transport for Students Lots of coverage in the media for this new service offering Luxury Transport for Students. New students are urged to become VIFs – or Very Important Freshers – and take advantage of these new ways of getting to university: We are stepping up the game, we are changing the way students …

Dialogue through technology

Dorm Room Diplomacy   Intrigued to learn about the activities of an organisation called Dorm Room Diplomacy which gets groups of students together from around the world, via videoconferencing, to engage in dialogue aimed at promoting greater international understanding: Founded by students at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, Dorm Room Diplomacy fosters intercultural dialogue …

True Crime on Campus §37: long hot summer

Even More True Crime on Campus It may be summer but our always vigilant Security staff are still on duty to ensure that every unlikely situation is dealt with: 08:05 Security reported an altercation between a driver and a cyclist at the end of the road leading up to the West Entrance Gatehouse on University …

Amazon on campus

Amazon sets up shop at Purdue   According to @insidehighered Purdue University is to become the next "Amazon Campus", which will allow access to Amazon offered products through the Purdue Student Store.   Beyond Amazon's impact on campus bookstores' bottom lines, the company's presence in higher education has mostly been felt in the post office, …

Archers Academics

Beyond @LegoAcademics Inspired by the novelty of Lego Academics and by the chance meeting (by my wife) of an Archers namesake at a conference I wondered how many Archers characters also had academic counterparts. (For those not familiar with the world's longest running radio soap opera see the Wikipedia page which helpfully summarises the plot …

Can we have our Honorary Degree back please?

Honorary Degree revocation is pretty unusual Previous posts have commented on the awards of Honorary Degrees to celebrities. The risk for universities in making such awards though is that famous people sometimes turn out to be not such terrific assets to the institution's reputation. There are only a few examples of this but they are …

New Sino-Foreign Fun

US and Russian universities in new Sino-Foreign ventures Exciting news from Asia as not one but two universities announce new Sino-Foreign higher education institutions. First up is the University of Pittsburgh which has recently held a groundbreaking for the new Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute: Officials from the University of Pittsburgh and Sichuan University in China participated …