The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council

The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council is being urged to take forward the battle against short-term contracts as part of an equal opportunities drive.

The AUT Scotland has praised the Higher Education Funding Council's initiative to set up an equal opportunities directorate. But it warns that equal opportunities includes casualisation, where talks between UK unions and employers are "less encouraging".

Distance learning: celebrity stargazer Patrick Moore opened the University of Hertfordshire's upgraded observatory at Bayfordbury this week. The university claims it is the UK's best-equipped astronomical teaching observatory