£5m for Students’ Green Fund

Big funding for student-led green initiatives. HEFCE recently announced the launch of the 'Students’ Green Fund' which is intended to help students work with their institutions on sustainable development: NUS will run a single-round bidding competition in summer 2013, to allocate the funding. The funded projects will then receive the funding over two full academic …

Broken Universities?

Our universities are broken, it seems According to a new report from the Adam Smith Institute, higher education should not receive public money in the way that it does: In The Broken University, education expert James Stanfield examines what is seen and what is not seen in the UK higher education sector. In contrast to …

University funding: devastating cuts or continued investment?

Russell Group and UCU lining up against government cuts Rhetoric overload has kicked in pretty early. If we're not careful we'll have used the full armoury of adjectives to describe the cuts far too early in the campaign. The UCU line, as reported in the Guardian, envisages huge class sizes and thousands of academics on …

On the need for discretion in discussing HE cuts

Very good piece by David Eastwood in The Guardian. As he suggests - the cuts being discussed are achievable, perhaps, but hardly desirable. Moreover, they should be a matter for discreet discussion, not broadcast: Many of us remember the glorious Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch. A quartet of the now-comfortably off, drinking Château de Chasselas, …

How real is the concern over degree standards?

Guardian story: Take concern over degree standards seriously, universities warned Whilst MPs will always find ways to give VCs and universities a hard time, they can rarely be accused of getting too close to the serious issues. But where is the evidence for this huge public concern about degree standards? And are the responses the …