The number of UK students who have applied to university for 2012, when they will be charged fees of up to £9,000, has fallen by 15.1 per cent on the same point last year.
Research-intensive universities in the UK should be considering setting up more campuses overseas to counter the threat of falling international student numbers at home, a mission group has said.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has been warned that the deadline set for final decisions on its controversial “shaping capabilities” programme may be too tight to allow the necessary consultation with researchers.
Research into eye disease, a ground-breaking creative writing course and work to improve food security has helped 18 universities to win Queen’s Anniversary prizes for higher and further education.
One of the UK’s biggest private providers has set out bold plans to become a university, more than double in size and takeover or link up with other “complementary institutions” both in Britain and abroad.
The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has found itself back in the spotlight with the leak of over 5,000 emails seemingly to and from its academic staff.
The University of Southampton’s first overseas campus has begun enrolling students after the project received academic accreditation from the Malaysian authorities.
A university that has been on the funding council’s “at risk” list for 12 years – longer than any other in England – has been removed from the register.
A Turner Prize-winning artist has criticised a decision by a university art school to concentrate more on digital-based courses in a restructure that threatens around a dozen jobs.
A professor of English studies at the University of Strathclyde has been named as the new director of research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Universities in the UK should be wary of any attempts by the European Commission to take greater control of higher education policy as it could present a threat to institutional autonomy, a vice-chancellor has told a House of Lords committee.
The vice-chancellor of an Australian university is to step down along with his deputy over “irregularities” that helped a close relative to secure a place at the institution.
The Astronomer Royal has called for a system of scientific research funding which puts far less stress on “improving efficiency in the ‘office management’ sense” and sets out to “maximize the chance of landmark achievements”.
Universities that do not demonstrate “extensive school involvement” in their initial teacher training provision may cease to be able to offer such courses.
A total of 27 universities and colleges have applied to lower their tuition fees in 2012-13 so they can compete for some of the 20,000 cut-price places being created by the government.
Universities will have to ditch the conservatism that has allowed them to survive in the past and change at a much greater pace if they are to prosper in the future, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has argued.
More than 450 private colleges have been stopped from recruiting international students after most of them failed to sign up to the Home Office’s new rules for inspection of the sector.
Lancaster University has announced plans to collaborate with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies to build a new university campus in Guangzhou, China.
An academic involved in the scandal over links between the Gaddafi regime and the London School of Economics is to leave the institution ahead of a report into the affair.
Funding chiefs in England have told the government they have “concerns” about the timetable for implementing a new regulatory framework for higher education, warning the challenge of bringing in some reforms by 2013 should “not be underestimated”.
Employers have agreed to hold fresh talks with the University and College Union over the sector’s biggest pension fund, following the start of industrial action.
Two sixth-form students have launched legal action against what they claim is the government’s “unlawful” decision to treble the tuition fee cap to £9,000.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has declined to mothball its controversial shaping capability policy but agreed to work more closely with learned societies on implementing it.
The vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge has offered a robust defence of research as “inherent to the very fibre of a university” and bemoaned the “deafening” silence from government over persistent concerns about postgraduate funding.
Part-time students are to be given an extra year of grace before they become eligible to start repaying tuition fee loans after the government agreed to changes that had been put forward by the sector and Liberal Democrat peers.
A cross-party committee of peers in the House of Lords is to investigate how the European Union can help higher education across the continent to boost jobs, growth and innovation.
The 40 per cent reduction in public spending on universities over the next four years will help contribute to the biggest fall in education spending over such a period since the 1950s, a respected policy institute has estimated.
The first set of figures on university applications for 2012 entry, when the fee cap rises to £9,000, shows a 9 per cent fall compared to the same time last year.
One in five higher education institutions in England is seeking to lower its fee levels to less than £7,500 to bid for additional student places, the Office for Fair Access has said.
A former president of the British Academy has argued that universities are subject to “elaborate forms of accountability that reveal little about how effectively students are taught or how much they learn on different courses”.
The UK research base is the most productive in the world but its position could be threatened by relatively low investment, a government-commissioned report warns.
The status and influence of chief scientific advisors varies wildly across government, with many advisors lacking sufficient independence, oversight, or ministerial access to properly fulfil their briefs.