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Welsh universities risk having their student numbers cut by up to almost 60 per cent if they do not reduce their fees in 2013-14, it has been announced.

The National Union of Students has proposed 10 alternative uses for the £60 million that ministers apparently wanted invested in a royal yacht for the Queen’s jubilee.

Students enrolling at university in 2012-13 will have to earn salaries of £50,000 a year immediately after graduating if they are to pay off their student loan debt before the 30-year government write-off threshold, a new analysis suggests.

Oil giant Shell is to close its main UK research and development base, moving the laboratory activities overseas.

A medical student who twice failed his final-year exams has lost a legal battle against the decision not to award him a degree.

The number of firsts and 2:1s awarded by UK universities has continued to rise, now accounting for almost two thirds of undergraduates completing their first degree.

Research misconduct is “alive and well” at UK universities, the British Medical Journal has claimed.

A pay-day loans company has been accused of preying on vulnerable students after advertising itself as an alternative to government-backed student loans.

An Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed by a car bomb in the capital Tehran.

More than 50 graduates are chasing every job offered by some of Britain’s top employers, new research suggests.

David Willetts has urged universities to redouble their efforts to boost knowledge transfer income from businesses despite a stagnant economy.

A former employee of Queen’s University Belfast has been arrested as part of an investigation into alleged threats to kill a former colleague.

A professor of pharmacology has been named as the new head of Brunel University.

The number of research council-funded doctoral students remaining in the academy beyond graduation is increasing, new figures reveal.

The president of Universities UK has written a letter to newspapers in India expressing his “deep sadness” at the murder of student Anuj Bidve and to reassure others planning to study in Britain that such events are “exceptionally rare”.

University applications by UK students are running 7.6 per cent below last year’s levels, the latest figures show.

David Willetts has set out proposals for major multi-national corporations to join forces with a foreign or British university and establish new graduate-only research institutions in the UK.

Students at King’s College, Cambridge, spent so much time on protests challenging the higher education reforms that they neglected their studies, according to its provost.

The University of Reading has signed a £230 million deal which will see its entire campus accommodation run by a private company.

The university sector has lost a tenth of its secondary-level initial teacher training places for 2012-13, government allocations reveal.

The vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England has been elected as the new chair of the University Alliance as the mission group expands its membership to 24 institutions.

The funding settlement for Scottish universities for the next academic year has been welcomed by Universities Scotland and the National Union of Students.

Welsh universities must merge if they are to be sustainable, the minister for education has reaffirmed.

The University of Hong Kong and the University of Cambridge have struck up a new partnership to recruit engineering students from mainland China.

Well over four fifths of students admitted to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge last year were white, statistics show.

Sixty per cent of leading public figures in the UK have humanities, social science or arts degrees, a new study has found.

University College London’s senior administrative officer has pressed its students’ union to drop a motion of no confidence in the provost, Malcolm Grant.

The University of California, Berkeley has unveiled plans for a new financial aid scheme explicitly aimed at helping middle-class students with their tuition fees.

Further education colleges could make “substantial” savings by cutting the costs of bureaucracy, according to the National Audit Office.

The School of Oriental and African Studies has begun legal proceedings to end an occupation of one of its buildings.

“Tantalising hints” have been discovered of the fabled Higgs boson – but the data are not yet strong enough to make any conclusive statements about its existence.

Thirty higher education institutions are to offer a new teacher training programme in physics and mathematics, it has been announced.

Another paper authored by University of Manchester professor Sylvia Bulfone-Paus has been retracted – but this one does not feature the Russian postdoctoral researchers blamed for misconduct that led to a string of retractions earlier this year.

The senate of Queen Mary, University of London, has become the latest academic body to pass a vote of no confidence in universities and science minister David Willetts.

University journalism courses are not responsible for the industry’s ethical failings, such as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, journalism lecturers have told the Leveson inquiry

Two proposals have been put forward to avert the “polarisation” of the sector as a result of the government’s student number plans.

A university is launching a competition to win an “Ultimate Scholarship”, which would give the winner free tuition at the institution for life.

David Cameron is to announce a new government strategy developing links between university medical research, the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry.

Foreign academics working in the US are more productive than their American counterparts – but are also less satisfied with their work, a study has concluded.

The UK’s higher education and college IT network, JANET, is to benefit from a £31 million boost from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

The students’ union at University College London has passed a vote of no confidence in the provost, Malcolm Grant, after he was appointed to take charge of the NHS in England under controversial government changes.

The government’s higher education reforms have created “unnecessary risk” for universities, the shadow business secretary has said in his first major speech on the sector.

Proposals by 25 universities and colleges to cut their tuition fees so they can bid for 20,000 cut-price undergraduate places in 2012-13 have been approved by the Office for Fair Access, but it has led to only a small fall in the sector average of £90 to £8,071.

Research libraries have reached a “new and improved” deal with the journal publisher Elsevier that ends a four-month stand-off between the two.

Research funders should avoid “micromanaging” research and requiring applicants to set out the impact of their proposals, according to the president of the Royal Society.

The European Research Council’s budget will increase by nearly 80 per cent if the European Commission’s detailed proposals for its research and innovation spending are adopted.

The London School of Economics was guilty of multiple failures of governance and management in its links with the deposed Gaddafi regime, an inquiry has concluded.

A senior lecturer at Teesside University is reported to have been arrested as part of Operation Weeting, the ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation into phone hacking.

University lecturers and support staff are on strike over pensions today, joining national action that unions say will involve up to two million public sector workers.

The government’s higher education reforms are built round a set of “meretricious policy concepts” – competition, choice and access – which are in fact “virus-like destroyers of the idea of a university”, a leading historian has argued.

Glyndwr University has been saved from merger after the Welsh education minister rejected a proposal that it should move into a “group structure” managed by Bangor and Aberystwyth universities.

A major barrier to universities saving money by sharing services is set to be removed by the government.

Science organisations have welcomed the government’s announcement of £200 million in additional capital spending.