Today's news

Universities 'should give lessons in morality'
Universities are failing to equip their students with a basic sense of morality, Steven Schwartz, the vice-chancellor of Brunel, said yesterday. "Plagiarism, incivility, rudeness and reneging on legitimate debts - all of these are depressingly common among university students," he said.
Daily Telegraph

Work to resume on animal lab
Scientists at Oxford University have been given assurances that work on a controversial animal research laboratory will resume within weeks and be completed this year.
Guardian

Cambridge students await architecture decision
Students and academics at Cambridge will today learn the fate of their architecture department as dons gather to make a decision on its future.
Guardian, (Times Higher, November 26)

Brunel goes back to school
Brunel University is to build a city academy for school pupils aged 16 to 19 on its campus in Uxbridge, West London. The college will be the first of its kind and aims to encourage inner-city students into higher education.
Times, BBC, Guardian

Academics resort to torture
Scientists at Oxford University are to torture people in laboratories in an experiment to see whether a belief in God is effective at relieving pain.
Daily Mail, Guardian

Oxford may become less green
Oxford University could turn its back on its green electricity policy despite denouncing fossil fuels four years ago. It is the fourth largest purchaser of green electricity in the UK. But university chiefs say they may not be able to renew the contract, which ends in March, because of its cost.
BBC

Scientists pinpoint cosmic smoking gun
Two separate surveys of the sky by teams of international astronomers have identified the cosmic "missing link" in the chain of creation. Tiny ripples in space - "sound waves" from the Big Bang - made in the first moments of creation are revealed in a pattern of the galaxies 13 billion years later.
Guardian

How to save Oxford from mediocrity
Without a sharp hike in fees for the well-off, it is doomed to decline, argues Richard Lambert
Guardian

Research points to fewer BSE cases
The likelihood of an epidemic of the human form of BSE is small, researchers from Imperial College London say. They predict about 70 more cases caused by eating infected beef in the 1980s and 1990s, although they concede that there could be as many as 600 deaths from the incurable condition if all genetic groups are affected.
Guardian