20 years ago

The University of Cambridge has become the most spectacular victim of the Economic and Social Research Council's tough policy on PhDs. The council has put the university on its blacklist of institutions where ESRC studentships can no longer be held because fewer than 40 per cent of its PhD students have managed to complete their degree in the prescribed four-year period. Of 45 ESRC studentships taken up at Cambridge from 1982 to 1984, only 16 submitted their PhDs within four years.

Students at Chicago's Roosevelt University are facing an unusual challenge: how to spend $2.75 million on having a good time. The money comes from the will of Marvin Moss, a Hollywood agent who died in 1986. Mr Moss, an alumnus of Roosevelt, left the bequest on the strict condition that it should be spent on "fun".