New Global Universities Ranking: Shock Results

US dominates new global ranking Exciting news that US News is producing a new global universities ranking. In an extraordinary related development another league table, the "World Series Ranking", seeks to trump this and has published a top 20 which bears a remarkable similarity to the US national top 20: 1 Princeton University 2 Harvard …

True Crime on Campus §38: back to school

Autumn brings even more True Crime on Campus As autumn arrives and students return to campus our outstanding Security staff are ready for any eventuality: 2315 Patrol Security Officers spoke to a member of the Public who had fallen off his bike while cycling on a footpath adjacent to the Orchard Hotel. The male stated …

Ghana gets tough on Honoraries

In Ghana, the Accreditation Board is "mad" at honorary degree awards Ghana News reports that the country's Accreditation Board is "mad" at honorary degree awards by unqualified institutions: The conferment of honorary degrees is the prerogative of degree awarding institutions so mandated. Therefore accredited private tertiary institutions operating under the mentorship of chartered, degree-awarding universities …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Urgent: save those emails

Do we need to preserve Vice-Chancellors' emails? A diverting essay in Inside Higher Ed has a call for the preservation of presidential email: ...boards of trustees should act – with a sense of urgency. They might begin by appointing a task force, composed of professional historians, lawyers, board members, and administrators, to recommend procedures for …

More on Beyoncé and Ghostbusting courses

The Telegraph seems to have a bit of a thing about courses featuring popular music and musicians. Especialy Beyoncé. Recently they published this story about Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus studies being offered at US colleges: It will focus on the growth of the star’s media empire, with an emphasis on her roles as a “black …

The new University of Life

Some people are just too smart for university Must admit to being immensely irritated at the so-called 'UnCollege' proposition> And, having seen Dale speak recently at Going Global my annoyance has not decreased. This seems to be the story of UnCollege:   Dale was unschooled for grades six through twelve and enrolled at Hendrix College …

Spy kids

GCHQ accredits UK master's degrees for 'cyber spies'     Was very much taken by this thrilling news. Of course we have had Professional Body accreditation for many years and more recently courses supported by Asda and other supermarkets. But this is a little bit different. Not least in the sense that GCHQ is not …

Singalonga Higher Ed

Lyrical challenges at the University of Utah   Inside Higher Ed has a diverting piece on the changes being made to the University of Utah's 'fight song' to address some of the lyrical challenges of the original: The line “our coeds are the fairest” will be replaced with “our students are the finest” and the …

Honorary Degree: serious or celeb 2014

Who are this year's lucky winners? A post some time ago on Honorary Degree recipients noted that almost all of them fall clearly into one of two categories: they are either serious or celeb. Back in 2013 I provided a handy list of recent Honoraries for further analysis. Basically, if you are a serious academic, …

Signs of the Times

Is university signage important for academic achievement? No. And I fear that this story rather overstates the significance of signage on university campuses. This piece was pointed out to me by Simon @GlobalHE (to whom many thanks) and covers the importance of signage in education. Whilst I really do want to take it seriously and …

Most serious league tables of the year?

League tables of choice All rankings have their shortcomings. Some though are perhaps even more methodologically questionable than others. I was struck recently by two league tables which seemed to be even less credible than this very important ranking of universities based on the length of their name. First up is the ranking of the …

Real or Fake Universities: the results

 Real or fake universities? The votes are in     Most of the following list of institutions are from the US and the UK but there are a few from other countries too. Five of these are fake but all the other ones are real. Did you manage to identify the five HE fraudsters? IHere's …