GPA v Degree Class: a “Goldilocks” solution?

As UK looks at GPA, US considers degree class There has been a debate in UK Higher Education for the past few years about the merits of moving away from traditional degree classifications to a US style Grade Point Average (GPA). A recent piece in the Guardian notes the arguments for moving to GPA in …

Guardian League Table 2015: Well I never

New Guardian League Table for 2015 entry (and yes, Cambridge is top) Top 25 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year's position in brackets): 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (4) St Andrews 4 (7) Bath 5 (9) Imperial 6 (8) Surrey 7 (3) LSE 8 (6) Durham 9 (10) …

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 …

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) …

The Imperfect University: rational admissions – it’s time for PQA

A brighter future for university admissions? It will be some time before all of the results are in but it does look at this stage as if this year's admissions round has been a little less turbulent than last year's. The mood across many universities seems to be one of some relief after a period …

Guardian League Table 2014: One or two changes

New Guardian League Table for 2014 Top 20 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year's position in brackets): 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (3) LSE 4 (4) St Andrews 5 (6) UCL 6 (7) Durham 7 (9) Bath 8 (12) Surrey 9 (13) Imperial 10 (5) Warwick 11 (7) …

Students ‘swayed by league tables’

Some rather unsurprising research findings here. The Guardian has a report on the impact of university league tables on prospective students. And in what might be the least surprising research finding of the year to date reports that league tables are influential: Prospective students are increasingly influenced by university league tables when deciding where to …

A winning international strategy

The University of Nottingham wins another award.   The Guardian awarded its first HE prizes at a ceremony in London on Thursday. And the University of Nottingham came out top for its international strategy against stiff competition from UCL and Salford.     It's a terrific citation: As the first university to open a fully …

Good discipline?

Universities' disciplinary records under scrutiny. Some entertaining reactions to a piece in the Guardian which reported that university students had paid over £0.5m in fines in a year: Universities across the UK issued disciplinary and administrative fines totalling more than £550,000 to students last year. Freedom of information requests from the Guardian have shown students …

Refugee University

Bringing higher education to refugees in Kenya. A piece last year in the Guardian reported that Kenya's Kenyatta University was opening its doors to Somali refugees in Dadaab: Kenyatta University is setting up a campus in Dadaab, which is home to a sprawling complex of camps housing around 470,000 refugees, mainly Somalis who crossed the …

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 …

Giving league tables a bad name

This kind of thing really shouldn't be given any airtime Yes, sad to say it is the 'University Drinking League'. Fortunately it does not deserve to be taken at all seriously given that it is simply self-reported consumption by students. Being the responsible folks that we are we would never stoop to making lazy generalisations, …

QS World subject ranking – UK universities

New QS world rankings by subject The Guardian has a summary of UK universities' performance in the latest QS subject rankings and it looks like Oxford comes out top Institution name Highest rank Subject University of Oxford 1 Geography History Philosophy University of Cambridge 1 English Language and Literature London Business School 3 Accountancy and …

Troops to Teachers

New directions for service leavers: but should UK be doing more? The University of Nottingham is offering extra places for for former service personnel wishing to retrain as teachers. It's an interesting development and one which has arisen as part of a government initiative: British servicemen and women who are leaving or have left the …

Guardian League Table 2013: Ups and downs

New Guardian League Table for 2013 Top 20 of the full list (available here) is as follows (last year's position in brackets): 1 (1) Cambridge 2 (2) Oxford 3 (4) LSE 4 (3) St Andrews 5 (6) Warwick 6 (5) UCL 7 (8) Durham 7 (7) Lancaster 9 (14) Bath 10 (11) Exeter 11 (9) …