“There is no conflict between fair access and academic excellence. Nor should there be.” So said Les Ebdon, director of fair access to higher education in his latest report to parliament. But when it comes…
With higher education changes meaning universities will soon be looking for ways to cut costs, many have been wondering if universities will give up on research to focus on where the money is – teaching…
The debate about opening Australian universities to competition has so far been dominated by discussions about fees. While this is of particular interest to students whose education will receive a smaller…
Imbalances in the share of growth across the regions continue to be deep-rooted, the Office of National Statistics has confirmed. By 2012, the South East was the only region that had only just crept ahead…
Sweaty-palmed and reciting facts over and over in their heads, the hordes of university and school students sitting down to exams this month will have precious little time to think about how their exam…
Creative ideas and how we turn them into successful business ventures and social enterprises are vital to the UK’s global competitiveness. But how do we best support this? Of course there are many different…
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland for questioning over an abduction and murder committed in Belfast in 1972. He maintains his innocence and after four…
As Iraqis prepare to go to the polls to vote in parliamentary elections ten years on from the invasion, the country is a lifetime away from where things used to be. Iraq’s education system, once one of…
A growing number of UK students are considering going abroad to study with a majority of them motivated in some part by the rise in university fees at home, according to new research on student mobility…
Among the many changes currently sweeping through US public universities is a move away from traditional seat-time in class. Known as “competency-based education”, it is often done online, asking students…
Perhaps we should excuse comments made during the 2013 federal election about “wasteful” and “increasingly ridiculous research” undertaken in Australia. The real shock was not that shadow ministers could…
As part of the recent announcement that A Levels and GCSEs in arts subjects in England are to be made more “rigorous and demanding”, the secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, said he was “passionate…
Young people from black British backgrounds are more likely to go to university than their white British peers, but they are much less likely to attend the UK’s most selective universities. As the Independent…
I’m an unabashed political junkie. Who’s up, who’s down; who’s in, who’s out. Yet it’s fair to say that pretty much all the day-to-day policy spinning, posturing and firefighting rarely percolates outside…
Winning large research and capital grants could soon bring unwanted headaches for UK universities along with all the acclaim. From the next academic year, their accountants will be expected to adopt new…
With technology changing the landscape of higher education, The Conversation is running a series “Re-imagining the Campus” on the future of campus learning. Here, Tom Kvan explores how design should make…
It is a shocking statistic that there were just 85 black professors in UK universities in 2011-12. In stark terms, this means that there are more higher education institutions than there are black British…
By definition, corruption is any type of deviation from an ideal. Ideals, as well as ideas, are core business for higher education. So when we fall short it matters. Reputation is becoming ever more important…
Starting first year at university can be a daunting experience and a big adjustment for new students. Some adjust easily and thrive. As many as one third do not and think about leaving. If first year goes…
The drop in applications to European language programmes at UK universities will not have come as a great shock to anybody teaching languages. For at least the past 15 years, the number of students applying…