Today's news

Cass expands its executive education
As demand for its executive courses increases, Cass Business School is expanding its executive education and establishing premises at London's Canary Wharf. Many of the school's clients are already based at Canary Wharf and the school hopes that the nearby City Airport will encourage new, international customers to use the school. "Given the tremendous growth of executive education work that we do with banks and professional services firms, this is an important step forward for us as we respond to the needs of our clients based there," says Scott Moeller, chief executive and director of executive education at Cass.
The Financial Times

Students find there's gold in them thar mining courses
It offers travel to exotic locations, job satisfaction and salaries rivalling those in the City - though those with a fear of enclosed spaces need not apply. While a career in mining may not appear glamarous, figures show that hundreds of students are signing up for degrees. Course leaders say there has been a 100 per cent increase in applications this year, prompted by a worldwide shortage of miners. The rush mirrors the surge in those signing up for plumbing courses four years ago following reports of a national shortage of the tradesmen.
The Independent

Tudor treasures to receive grant
A valuable collection of Tudor manuscripts at Hengrave Hall in Suffolk has been saved for the nation after a campaign by Cambridge University Library, which received a grant of £285,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The letters include correspondence by Henry VIII, Queen Mary and Sir Philip Sidney.
The Times

Beat the blues with an injection of M
Watch how you go today. Keep any sharp instruments and large pieces of rope at a respectable distance. And just keep reminding yourself that things are likely to get a little better. For today is officially the most depressing day of the year. An academic at Cardiff University, Cliff Arnall, came up with January 23 by using his very own mathematical formula - [W + (Dd)] x TQ divided by M x NA. Sparing you the details, Arnall's formula involves taking all the bad things at this time of year, such as dank weather and intimidating post-Christmas debt, and dividing them by the motivation (denoted by the letter M) to take action to escape the blues. And it seems that the outcome of today's formula is melancholically high.
The Daily Telegraph, The Times Higher Education Supplement (Jan 20)

Speedy lecture podcasts to be available on iTunes
Sleeping off a hangover and missing a lecture may no longer be such a problem. Technologists within the Apple computer company in Europe are developing a pilot of a new system of recording and rebroadcasting lectures within an hour of the professor packing away their notes. The anticipated QuickTime 2 Really Simple Syndication (RSS) technology, a development program being piloted in Europe in the spring, will allow the lecturer to record their own "performance" - their slides, notes and details of student assignments as they deliver them live to the students in the lecture hall. Once the lecture is over, the technology behind the system can turn the content into suitable files and automatically upload them to Apple's iTunes network or connect it to RSS feeds that students, and others, can subscribe to.
The Guardian

Student group threatens to boycott national survey
Students at the UK's 19 top research-led universities are threatening to boycott the National Student Survey next year unless changes are made to the way it is structured. The Aldwych group, which represents student unions and guilds in the Russell group of institutions, has raised concerns over how the information is collected, the depth of the questions and the make-up of the survey's steering group. The NSS was carried out for the first time last year and the results were published in September. Conducted by the funding council, Hefce, and the National Union of Students, it gauged the opinions of 170,000 final-year students on all aspects of student life, from library facilities to tutor feedback.
The Guardian

From the weekend's papers:

Saturday

• Employers are now using more discreet ways of selecting Oxbridge gradautes. The Guardian
  
• Manchester University scientists have secured funding to build a huge international radio telescope. The Times
  
• Professors at University College London have published findings on a website that allows people to trace the history of their surname. The Times

Sunday

• Ministers spent £62 million on an online university that failed to attract more than 900 users. The News of The World