France puts art in the big picture
The arts will play a greater part in mainstream university studies following an agreement signed last week by education minister Jack Lang and culture minister Catherine Tasca. The agreement brings...
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Universities resist SA streamline plan
The South African government is facing fierce resistance to its efforts to streamline higher education, with one university going to court to stop an ordered merger and another successfully fighting...
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Don's diray: Scientist and MP trade places
Constituency day I am sitting in the staff room of a primary school in Chandler's Ford in Hampshire. The staff and governors are rushing around because it's an open day and local Liberal Democrat MP...
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Best of a beard lot
Terry Eagleton, literary critic and professor of cultural theory at the University of Manchester, has won the winter beard award. He received the prize, bestowed by the Beard Liberation Front, "after...
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Poisonous payments
The introduction of the euro presents a hidden health threat, said Klaus Ammann, director of the botanical garden at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He warned that as euro banknotes are made...
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On the way up
The Diary would like to welcome two new female heads of institution. Ann Tate, pro vice-chancellor for quality and enhancement at the University of Ulster, has been appointed rector of University...
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Take a history, nurse
Bamber Gascoigne, former presenter of University Challenge, has teamed up with the Wellcome Trust's Carole Reeves to launch an online account of medical history. HistoryWorld covers seven significant...
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Where Harry potters
Prince Harry has been spotted touring Trinity College, Cambridge, according to a report in student newspaper Varsity . A second-year student was quoted as saying: "We were at a dinner party last...
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No challenge in Chess
The students' associations of the ancient Scottish universities last week launched themselves as a lobby group, Chess, the Coalition of Higher Education Students in Scotland. The organisation said it...
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No-brow art
A Canadian fine arts student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, has really got herself plastered. After covering every part of her body in wet plaster to make a body mould, she found that...
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Verse blanked
David Morley, senior fellow and director of the Warwick writing programme at the University of Warwick, is worried about the dearth of publishing opportunities for new poets - so worried that he is...
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Feathery claims
A rare bittern, a medium-sized brown heron, was spotted last week at a campus of the University of Lincoln, at the same time as an influx of bitterns was recorded on England's east coast. But the...
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In the news: Bahram Bekhradnia
As director of policy at the English funding council, Bahram Bekhradnia this week appeared in front of the Commons select committee on science as part of its inquiry into the research assessment...
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Time is right for a tough stand on pay catch-up
If other partners on the union side agree (and why would they not?), university employers will be facing a 13 per cent pay claim for academic and academic-related staff this year. Such an increase...
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Archaic system for admissions has had its day
Giving A-level students marks instead of grades - an idea put forward by the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency and the master of New College, Oxford, Alan Ryan, last week - seems a breathtakingly...