Tesco, ergo sum
Richard A. Burridge argues that a crisis of value in higher education is shortchanging students and society. The academy in ancient Athens was at the edge of the agora so that its deliberations about...
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Haggling in the marketplace
The animal spirits of education entrepreneurs have rewarded Iona Burchell with two degrees, debt and no job I noticed a job advertisement the other day in a local paper which proudly proclaimed that...
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Euro-wide paralysis
Across Europe governments - and oppositions - are in trouble over the political and economic implications of the rapid transition to mass higher education. In just a few years aspirations have turned...
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Medical deans defy call to cut intake
Australia's deans of medicine are defying the federal government and refusing to cut student intakes. More than 1,500 new doctors are due to start work over the next 12 months. About 1,200 will...
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Oxbridge exaggerates the gender gap
Gillian Sutherland's observations on the alleged "gender deficit" (THES, October 13) contain many justified criticisms of assessment practices in universities. However, the premise that "girls...
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Opposition to opt-out goes beyond politics
I note (THES, October 20) that Ann Risman, principal of Richmond Adult and Community College, has dismissed opposition to her opt-out plans as "politically motivated". Referring to my resignation...
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Privates on parade
Private colleges in Malaysia will have to show that their courses meet national needs as one of five new conditions imposed by the education ministry, before it approves licences for new courses or...
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Satire strikes unfunny chord
Germany's overcrowded and bureaucratic university system has provoked one professor into a rather un-German line of attack - satire. Dietrich Schwanitz, professor of English studies at the University...
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Book us a place in top ten
I was surprised not to find the library of the London School of Economics (the British Library of Political and Economic Science) ranked among the top ten libraries for expenditure on books, in your...
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No gagging order of day at Portsmouth
I really must correct your reporting of various events at Portsmouth (THES, 13 October13). An industrial tribunal found in favour of Mrs Tall, the former vice chancellor's secretary, in her pursuance...
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Spare an ear for unease
This week spare a thought for the animals. The number of transgenic animals bred and experimented on is rocketing; the issue of the "oncomouse", bred to develop cancer is in the news again, as is the...
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Let us firm up the foundations first
Last Sunday I told the Labour party's national education conference that I had changed my mind about the further expansion of the number of students entering higher education. I did so with the...
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Social whirl puts students in spin
"Can this be," mused an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, "the end of western civilisation as we know it?" The Tribune, the powerhouse newspaper of the Midwest, could not resist poking fun at the...
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Coffee and corpses kill the appetite
Like students all over the world, the medical students at one of Israel's leading teaching hospitals in Jerusalem look forward to their coffee breaks. Time to read a paper maybe or grab something to...
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Greek universities shut for week
Greek universities are to close for a week as a warning and longer if necessary if the government fails to solve their long-standing financial and operational problems. Their collective debt is...