Language study just for the elite
A quarter of all Britain's students studying for foreign language degrees are concentrated at only five universities as specialist learning at sixth form and in higher education becomes ever more elite, a report warned last night. No former polytechnics in Scotland now teach the subjects to full degree level and several new universities in England have cut their courses, according to the latest study for the Nuffield Languages Programme. The number taking language degrees in the UK has fallen from 10,400 to 8,000 in five years - at a time when the number of students entering higher education has gone up by 9 per cent.
(Guardian)
Poorest students may be spared top-up fees
Education secretary Charles Clarke moved to reassure low-income families yesterday by emphasising that students might be exempted from the full fees of £3,000 a year, instead of just a £1,000 grant for living costs. The provision was contained in a little-noticed section of the white paper. Mr Clarke also suggested that the level of student loan would vary more widely according to the local cost of living at university.
(Times)
Chelsea headhunted for $100,000 job
Chelsea Clinton is the envy of this year's graduate trainees after being offered a $100,000 (£64,500)-a-year job with McKinsey, the New York management consultancy. Miss Clinton received similar job offers from Boston Group, another management consultancy firm, and appears to have negotiated a salary far above other graduates. Miss Clinton, who is 23 next week and will leave University College, Oxford, in the spring after completing a postgraduate course in international relations, wants to train as a business consultant specialising in the healthcare sector.
(Times, Daily Telegraph)
Exhibition to unveil Pompeii's lost glories
Many of Pompeii's greatest archaeological finds are to be put on public display for the first time. The celebrated Villa of the Papyri will open its doors for the first time next month while a major exhibition will show the best objects unearthed from the villa and the Pompeii area. The villa, one of the most important and evocative ancient sites in Italy, was the rambling, stately retreat in Herculaneum of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso.
(Daily Telegraph)