Category Archives: Higher education

‘You have to stand out’: six Dagenham teenagers on their future prospects

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Final year students from Goresbrook school talk about housing, higher education and social media – as well as hopes and fears

Zainab Shehzadi has a long list of worries: robots stealing jobs from humans, the damage wreaked on the climate by previous generations, turmoil in other countries, fighting fierce competition to secure a job that pays enough to live a comfortable life.

It’s a lot for a 17-year-old to take on, but she sees it as a reflection of the uncertain world she has grown up in. “We’re living in an age where everything is changing very rapidly,” she says.

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Cambridge college unmasks alumnae who were Bletchley Park codebreakers

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Names of 77 ex-students of women-only Newnham College who worked at Bletchley Park are revealed for first time

They worked day and night during the second world war, deciphering Nazi messages, breaking Enigma codes and analysing top-secret military documents. But until now it was not known just how many of the intrepid female codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park had studied at the same place, forming a hidden network of scholars who secretly changed the course of history.

The names of the 77 alumnae of Newnham College – a women-only college that is part of Cambridge University – who were recruited to intercept, decrypt and translate military messages during the war have been revealed for the first time in a college exhibit and roll of honour.

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UK science minister apologises and pays damages after academic’s libel action

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Michelle Donelan had accused two members of Research England’s advisory group of ‘sharing extremist views’ in letter to UKRI

Michelle Donelan, the science minister, has apologised and paid damages after accusing two academics of “sharing extremist views” and one of them of supporting Hamas.

In a statement posted on X, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology said she had deleted a tweet and letter published last year, and accepted what she termed a “clarification” from one of the academics, Prof Kate Sang at Heriot-Watt university in Edinburgh.

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Scientists unearth mysteries of giant, moving Moroccan star dune

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Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers find

They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.

Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert.

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University of Florida terminating all diversity, equity and inclusion positions

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Move is to comply with state law passed by Governor Ron DeSantis that prohibits public funding of DEI programs

The University of Florida is terminating all its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) positions to comply with a state law passed in January that prohibits state or federal funds from being used to fund the programs.

The university, with more than 30,000 undergraduates, said in a memo issued on Friday that it was closing its office of the chief diversity officer, eliminating DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halting DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors.

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Researchers study brain activity of surgeons for signs of cognitive overload

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Team at Imperial College London say techniques could be used to flag warning signs during surgery

It is a high-stakes scenario for any surgeon: a 65-year-old male patient with a high BMI and a heart condition is undergoing emergency surgery for a perforated appendix.

An internal bleed has been detected, an anaesthetics monitor is malfunctioning and various bleepers are sounding – before an urgent call comes in about an ectopic pregnancy on another ward.

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University of Florida student senate passes ‘green new deal’

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In a rebuke to Governor Ron DeSantis’s denialism, the student body calls for campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis

The University of Florida student senate voted in favour of a “green new deal” late on Tuesday, becoming the first public university to adopt such a resolution through student government.

The mandate – which was unanimously passed – calls for sweeping campus-wide measures to tackle the climate crisis that include just transition, total divestment from fossil fuels, disclosure of the university’s financial ties within the private sector and a ban on receiving research funding from the fossil fuel industry.

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Academics win claim against Oxford University over ‘sham contracts’

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Rebecca Abrams and Alice Jolly claimed they were denied important workplace rights for 15 years

Two academics who sued Oxford University for employing them on “sham contracts” as gig economy workers, have won their claim for employee status in a ruling that could have implications for other higher education workers on precarious contracts.

Rebecca Abrams and Alice Jolly, both respected authors, taught on Oxford’s prestigious creative writing course for 15 years, but were employed on fixed-term “personal services” contracts, which they claimed denied them important workplace rights.

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‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

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Last year, 10,000 sham papers had to be retracted by academic journals, but experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg

Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.

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UK universities to review international student admissions after recruitment controversy

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Move comes after accusations of lowering entry standards to foreign applicants who pay far higher tuition fees

Vice-chancellors are to review international student admissions by British universities, including how to identify “bad practice” among agents employed to attract people from overseas, after controversy over recruitment.

Universities UK, which represents university leaders, announced a series of reviews into the use of recruitment agents and international foundation programmes, as well as the code of practice governing admissions.

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DfE to investigate claims of bad practice in recruitment of international students

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Move follows reports overseas students face lower entry requirements, a claim universities reject

The Department for Education is to investigate allegations of bad practice by agents who recruit international students to study at British universities.

It follows reports over the weekend claiming that overseas students are being admitted to prestigious institutions while subject to lower entry requirements than domestic students.

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‘A bully’: the billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit

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US hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posts 4,000-word screed decrying ‘racism against white people’ after Gay’s departure

Chief among the campaigners celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a man who arguably did the most to push Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, out the door: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard alumnus.

Ackman, who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a rightwing campaign against the Harvard president – who said many of the attacks against her were “fueled by racial animus”.

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Students find Erasmus replacement scheme inadequate, analysis finds

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Some UK applicants forced to quit Turing scheme when places not confirmed or they failed to receive funds in time

Students taking part in the government’s post-Brexit replacement for the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange scheme were forced to drop out because places were confirmed too late, while others failed to receive funding until after their return, according to analysis.

The first official analysis of the Turing scheme, which was announced by the then prime minister Boris Johnson and launched in 2021, found that four out of five universities (79%) had difficulties with the application process, which was overly complex, repetitive and “tedious”.

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Academic paper based on Uyghur genetic data retracted over ethical concerns

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Exclusive: Study published in 2019 used blood and saliva samples from 203 Uyghur and Kazakh people living in Xinjiang capital

Concerns have been raised that academic publishers may not be doing enough to vet the ethical standards of research they publish, after a paper based on genetic data from China’s Uyghur population was retracted and questions were raised about several others including one that is currently published by Oxford University Press.

In June, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publisher, retracted an article entitled “Analysis of Uyghur and Kazakh populations using the Precision ID Ancestry Panel” that had been published in 2019.

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‘We did it together’: New York mother and daughter graduate college on same day

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Tanisha, 36, and Barbara Wiggins, received degrees in human services together from Onondaga Community College in Syracuse

A New York mother and daughter duo have earned their college degrees together on the same day, fulfilling a lifelong dream for both of them.

With her toddler in tow, Tanisha Wiggins, 36, walked across the stage alongside her mother, Barbara Wiggins, 58, at their college, Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York. They were both awarded degrees in human services.

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Sciences Po director leaves role temporarily after domestic violence allegations

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Boss of elite French university Mathias Vicherat has been interviewed by police and denies claims against him

The director of once of France’s most prestigious higher education colleges, Sciences Po in Paris, is to stand down temporarily after being interviewed by police over accusations of domestic violence.

Mathias Vicherat said he would withdraw from his position for a period, the length of which was to be decided by the establishment’s governing bodies. He made the announcement after students at the college – whose alumni include Emmanuel Macron and several other presidents as well as prominent business leaders and top civil servants – staged a sit-in last week calling for his resignation.

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‘They can afford fair compensation’: faculty at largest US public college system strike for equitable salaries

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About 29,000 workers of the California Faculty Association are on strike as disparity between admin and professor pay increases

California State University faculty at four campuses went on strike on Monday to demand higher pay and expanded parental leave for thousands of workers at the largest public university system in the US.

The California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 workers, is staging one-day work stoppages at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; San Francisco State University; California State University, Los Angeles and California State University, Sacramento.

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Misinformation expert says she was fired by Harvard under Meta pressure

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Joan Donovan says funding was cut off for criticizing Meta when university was receiving $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity

One of the world’s leading experts on misinformation says she was fired by Harvard University for criticising Meta at a time that the school was being pledged $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.

Joan Donovan says her funding was cut off, she could not hire assistants and she was made the target of a smear campaign by Harvard employees. In a legal filing with the US education department and the Massachusetts attorney general first published by the Washington Post, she said her right to free speech had been abrogated.

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US university presidents to testify before Congress over claims of antisemitic protests on campuses

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Heads of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be questioned

The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three of the country’s most prestigious universities, are set to testify before a congressional committee next week on claims that antisemitic protests have taken place on their campuses, marking the latest window into ongoing tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

Next Tuesday, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth will stand before the House education and workforce committee, a body chaired by Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.

“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses. Meanwhile, college administrators have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow,” said Foxx in a statement introducing the hearing, which is titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.

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Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate

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Consul Yuval Donio-Gideon objected to course at Bard College but president says institution ‘stood up for academic freedom’

An Israeli diplomat tried to persuade a leading New York college to cancel a course about the growing debate over whether the Jewish state practices a form of apartheid in the Palestine.

The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

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