The high-flyers who don't stray far from the nest
Poor students tend to stay in their home area and go to post-92 institutions despite getting top A-level grades. If they took their fair share of places at leading universities, 3,000 privately...
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King's Lynn: no choice at all
When there is only one choice, there is no choice, and the options for teenagers living in the Fenlands of East Anglia are limited. Beyond a further education college in the main urban centre, King's...
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Aspirations: an ambassador's work
Fahmida Ferdous never doubted that she would one day enrol on a degree course. "I always knew I was going to university," she says. "My mum went to university, my cousins went. My grandad was a...
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Contradictory capital city confuses and confounds
Londoners do worse at GCSE than their peers in the rest of the country yet they notch up a high participation rate. Lee Elliot Major reports on the factors behind this puzzle Here is an educational...
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'The approach of the Government must be sophisticated...
... if it is to be fair and protective of academic standards' Hefce's Young Participation in Higher Education report proves access is not a one-dimensional concept, says Times Higher editor John O'...
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'We now have a full picture of the tasks we're facing'
The statistics on students' backgrounds reveal how much work remains to be done in the battle to give all young people access to higher education, writes Peter Lampl Publishing benchmarks that show...
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Congrats! It's a girl born in the autumn in Chelsea
A new national map of economic and social patterns reveals that your sex, when you were born and where you live all have a significant influence on your chances of attending university. Paul Hill...
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Laurie Taylor Column
"Universities bend over backwards not to be judgemental. If universities can't provide an ethical model, what value is their education?" - Steven Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Brunel University. Ah,...
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Leader: Tips from abroad as closures bite
Academics in continental Europe are no doubt following the row about course closures in the UK and the debate about how to protect courses of national importance with a mix of curiosity and...
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Leader: No defence for hired help
The discovery that the research councils have spent almost £100,000 on hiring private-sector consultants to train members to withstand scrutiny by select committees is alarming (page 1). It is also...
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Time limit is the limit 1
What is happening to the advancement of knowledge for its own sake? It seems that PhDs are now being pulled into the "sausage machine" of time-constrained knowledge production and standardisation ("...
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Time limit is the limit 2
Questions over the future of part-time PhDs reveal an irresistible pull to return higher education to its elitist past under the guise of issues of quality assurance. Technology affords the means to...
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Bard medicine 1
Kate McLuskie makes clear her disagreement with Tom McAlindon's gloomy assessment of the current state of Shakespeare studies, something that he attributed to the dominance of politicised modes of...
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Bard medicine 2
In answer to Tom McAlindon's complaint that, as regards Shakespeare studies, there has been "a marked decline in standards of analysis, interpretation and argument", Kate McLuskie, the newly...
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Give Wales its due
We all enjoy good news stories, and last week you covered two stories with clear similarities; both concerned university announcements of particularly large new multidisciplinary research institutes...