Don's Diary
Thursday. The 30th undergraduate intake of my career and I find myself singing a Rolling Stones' number - "This could be the last time". There must be a better way of admitting students. The...
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Hooray for Henley
A switch in ministerial responsibilities at the Department for Education and Employment has left Lord Henley looking after higher education. Eric Forth, the former higher education minister, now has...
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Vocational A levels hit by dropouts
More than a quarter of students joining "vocational A-level" courses in 1994 have either dropped out or made no progress, it emerged this week. Figures released by the Joint Council of National...
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Tilted timing
One secret at the Open University is that the phrase "unable to attend summer school", when it appears in a student's records, in fact means "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure". But this code could...
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SS officer keeps degree
A German university has decided to allow a former Nazi SS member to keep the doctorate he earned under a pseudonym to conceal his wartime activities. The University of Erlangen-Nurnberg found no...
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Mobility of Irish and Jewish immigrants
This month's prize for Sheer Academic Shamelessness goes to Ceri Peach ("A Question of Collar", THES, August 23). He calmly admits that there is no evidence for a central part of his highly...
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Warrior on want
Blessed are the poor ... for they have Peter Townsend fighting their corner. Which is just as well because, as he argues, the Tories have systematically unpicked the British welfare safety net. Huw...
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BSE on the run
The Wellcome Trust says the BSE epidemic in Britain is in rapid decline and predicts that even if culling does not take place, the epidemic will fade towards extinction by 2001. The trust adds,...
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Painted wagon-trail
The Duke of Edinburgh, opening an Edinburgh university building recently in his role as chancellor, evoked memories of his visit to the nearby Ashworth Laboratories last year. Those preparations had...
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Dying for a fag? Yes, says critic
Cigarette advertisers are capitalising on images of entrapment and oblivion, a Scottish academic claims. Alastair McIntosh of Edinburgh University's Centre for Human Ecology argues +that the health...
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Skull's odyssey tracked
The 400th anniversary of Descartes' birth near Tours has seen the traditional commemorative publications. But one biographer, retired medical professor Emile Aron, found that he spent much of his two...
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Academic sympathy for transsexuals
Deirdre McCloskey's excellent piece on gender transitions in academia (THES, August 23) implies that transsexuals face a particularly tough time in Britain. While she is correct that the position of...
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Bard-mouthing the Scots
Jennifer Wallace reports on the 'new' Shakespeare play. They were all distinctly underwhelmed at the International Shakespeare conference at Stratford. Radio 4's Today programme ran a story on the...
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Casino course
Never let it be said that making it in the jobs market these days is a lottery. Lucky students at Salford University have been given the chance of a new degree with the odds of a job at the end of it...
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Peerless prof
David Currie, professor of economics at the London Business School, became a life peer in the list announced this week. Professor Currie, 49, is a member of the Treasury Panel of Independent...