Student fees could be doubled
The education select committee is this week expected to recommend the doubling of university tuition fees to £2,000 a year per student. It is feared that chancellor Gordon Brown will use this as a way of funding higher education. Cambridge University is considering charging students up to £4,000 a year in tuition fees to overturn a £12 million deficit.
(Daily Telegraph, Times)
Students paint critical view of art school
Students from Camberwell College of Arts have claimed that it failed to teach them how to draw and paint. The South London institute was criticised for being “more interested in pretentious comments about art than traditional skills and artistry”.
(Times)
Birmingham’s £20m bid to expand business school
The University of Birmingham has unveiled a £20 million plan to refurbish and reposition its business school. Over the next five years the school hopes to double its academic staff to about 110 and increase its student population to about 3,000.
(Financial Times)
Deprived children to experience university life
Schools minister David Miliband is to recommend allowing pupils from comprehensives to spend a week at their local university to open their eyes to further education. He will also urge undergraduates to become mentors to deprived kids.
(Daily Mirror)
Battle for £1bn science project
Yorkshire and Oxfordshire are both bidding to provide a home for the £1 billion high-energy neutron-scattering machine used for research into the structure of biological materials. The Yorkshire group battling for the UN project, the White Rose Consortium, comprises Sheffield, York and Leeds universities. Oxfordshire’s bid is from the Rutherford Appleton laboratory.
(Financial Times)
Academics divided over Israeli boycott
An angry debate has divided scholars after a Manchester professor sacked two liberal Israeli academics from minor roles on obscure journals as part of an international boycott of Israeli universities. The decision by Mona Baker, professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, provoked a stinging response led by Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt.
(Guardian)
New cases of HIV are drug-resistant
More than a quarter of all new cases of HIV are now caused by strains of the virus that are resistant to treatment, scientists at the University of California have found.
(Times, Financial Times)
Under 30s are worse off than their parents
The under 30s are the first generation for a century who can expect a lower standard of living than their parents, researchers at King’s College London have found. An ageing population, longer working hours, higher taxes and debts due to university fees are all having a huge effect on those starting out on the career ladder.
(Daily Mail)
Autism linked to smoking while pregnant
Children born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy could be up to 40 per cent more likely to develop autism, according to scientists at Sunderland University.
(Daily Mirror)
Are your pets poisoning you?
Scientists at Aberdeen University are investigating whether pets are passing on the bug campylobacter, which causes food poisoning in 500,000 Britons a year.
(Daily Mirror, Daily Mail)
End for the Earth in 48 years
The Earth will be so overexploited and the seas so barren that we will have to find a new planet by 2050, according to a survey by the World Wildlife Fund.
(Daily Mirror)