Higher

New model: Vice chancellor Christine King with students at Staffordshire University

Welcome to the campus of the future

Stephan Oates is the future of higher education. A father of six children and grandfather of two, he works as a part-time cleaner at Newcastle College in Newcastle-under-Lyme in the early hours of the morning, finishing his shift at 8am. Then he hotfoots it to the University of Staffordshire's Stoke-on-Trent campus where he has been studying fine art and where he is one of a large army of part-timers.

Inside Higher

Trevor Fisher: Why the admissions system has to change

Thursday, 3 July 2008

State schools and colleges are increasingly finding themselves trapped in no-man's land over admissions to the top universities. They are blamed for not preparing students properly to get into the research-intensive Russell Group universities. At the same time, league-table pressures, and the fact that their students are opting for the non-traditional A-level subjects that they enjoy, make it harder for them to meet the demands of admissions tutors.

Leading Article: Green giants

Thursday, 3 July 2008

Today People and Planet publishes its annual league table of how green our universities are, thereby putting useful pressure on higher education.

How to find the best digs in town

Thursday, 26 June 2008

As a prospective student, after you have decided what you want to study and where, the biggest decision you face is where to live. The days of opting between run-down university halls or mice-ridden flats are long gone. In the past decade, student property has become big business, and an increasingly complex and costly market.

Against The Grain: 'UFO sightings should be taken more seriously'

Thursday, 26 June 2008

David Clarke is a lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University who believes that UFOs are a worthy subject for academic study.

Terence Kealey: The state should keep its hands off Oxbridge

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Every five years, the Higher Education Funding Council for England conducts an assurance review of the universities it funds. Cambridge's one is coming up, and it is rumoured that it will fail. Why might Hefce condemn Cambridge?

Leading Article: Degree concern

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Peter Williams, chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency, has broken cover to give his views on degree standards. He is worried that the degree classification system of Firsts, 2:1s and 2:2s is arbitrary and unreliable, and he is concerned that universities are taking too many overseas students whose English is inadequate.

Education Letters: Maths for engineers

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Imperial College has said that it plans to lengthen degrees due to students' weakness in maths. We are most encouraged by the universities who will be welcoming successful advanced diploma graduates in the years to come.

Surrey University's new China institute will help to put it on the international map

Thursday, 26 June 2008

At which university did Led Zeppelin perform their first gig in 1968, the year that the university was establishing a 74-acre campus on the outskirts of a prosperous south-eastern town in the shadow of a great red-brick cathedral?

Ride of a lifetime: From the fairground to a university career

Sunday, 22 June 2008

There probably aren't many university professors able to boast that their aunt was a professional contortionist and can-can dancer. And for whom family visits involved remembering the names of more than 50 first cousins, taking money from punters for the "big wheel" and doing shifts on a candyfloss machine.

Against The Grain: 'I'd invite the BNP to a debate'

Thursday, 19 June 2008

Dennis Hayes is a visiting professor at the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University. He argues that academics should have the freedom to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions with impunity, no matter how offensive they might be.

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