2015 Complete University Guide League Table

It's spring and it's time for the first league table of the season. Once again it's the Complete University Guide which is first to publish this year. The top 25 is as follows: 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (3) London School of Economics 4 (6) St Andrews 5 (5) Durham 6 (4) Imperial …

Guidance or directive?

Easy finance A new statement from HEFCE advises universities how to make financial information more visible to students. But is it advice, guidance, assistance or in fact a clear directive? New guidance aims to help universities and colleges in England present information about income and expenditure on their web-sites in a way that is transparent …

OFT gives English HE a 2i (just)

A decent result for HE in England? A previous post noted the launch of an OFT investigation into competition in the HE sector in England. After gathering much information the OFT has now published a report which, broadly (and perhaps grudgingly), says things are working well: Overall, our analysis of the higher education sector in …

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 …

Save universities from more misguided regulation

Well-meaning but fundamentally wrong proposals for yet more regulation Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse in terms of higher education regulation, another group comes along and proposes a whole load more. Brilliant. (I've posted before here on this issue.) I've not seen the report yet (it is due to be published today) …

Reducing University Regulation in Australia

"Red tape strangling universities must be cut" A recently released report in Australia following a review of higher education regulation has found that an “unnecessarily heavy reporting burden” had been imposed on higher education providers by the quality agency and government. A report in University World News notes the irony in the fact that a paper …

Regulation without legislation

Not a campaign slogan but the next steps in HE regulatory change from HEFCE Something of a surprise announcement from HEFCE on new changes to HE regulation. The changes follow a written Ministerial statement from David Willetts. The changes cover a lot of ground: The success of higher education in England is underpinned by the …

Delivering better higher education data?

Another attempt to clean up HE data. A previous post on the HE regulatory landscape noted the challenge of sorting out the massive range of data reporting required of universities - 550 different reporting requirements - which entailed a major programme of work. A year later things have moved on it seems and we now …

2014 Complete University Guide League Table

It's spring and it's time for the first league table of the season. The Complete University Guide and league table for 2014 is now out. The details can be found on the Guide website together with lots of other analysis (including by subject, region and mission group)  and information on careers, fees etc. The main …

Broadcasting university performance

Very public reports on institutional performance. Accessible university performance data.   Rather impressed by this Performance Tracker which is concerned with reporting in a very accessible way on the progress of Michigan's public universities: The achievement of Michigan's public universities is a critical factor as we look to participate in the knowledge economy of tomorrow. …

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 …

Scottish Universities Challenged

Improving governance or constraining autonomy? An earlier post covered the outcomes of a review of governance in Scottish universities and reported a number of concerns about what looked like far-reaching and extremely interventionist proposals. Following this review the Scottish government has now indicated its response and, according to the Scotsman, it looks set to adopt …

Blots on the information landscape

Exciting new report on redesigning the higher education data and information landscape A previous post commented on regulatory issues and the work being undertaken on the "information landscape". A report on part of this work, the imaginatively entitled "Project B" has recently been agreed by the Interim Regulatory Partnership Group. The report sets out a …

The Imperfect University: Governance challenges at the University of Virginia

University of Virginia: considerable turbulance at the top A rather topical post for the latest in the Imperfect University series. There have been some extraordinary goings on at the University of Virginia. To the surprise of just about everyone the University's Board of Visitors (its governing body) decided two weeks ago to remove the President, …

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 …