Academics launch private college

5 June 2011 Last updated at 16:28 GMT The 14 professors behind the project include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins A new British college aiming to rival Oxford and Cambridge has been launched by leading academics.

New College of the Humanities will give a high-quality education to "gifted" undergraduates and a degree from the University of London, creators say.

The privately-owned London-based college will open in September 2012 and is planning to charge fees of £18,000.

The 14 professors involved include biologist Richard Dawkins and historian Sir David Cannadine.

Professor Dawkins is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, as well as being the author of The God Delusion, and Sir David is a professor at Princeton University in the United States.

Based in Bloomsbury, central London, the new college will offer eight undergraduate humanities degrees taught by some of the world's most prominent intellectuals, officials said.

Degrees cover five subject areas - law, economics, history, English literature and philosophy.

Students will also take three "intellectual skills" modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics - which will result in them being awarded a Diploma of New College in addition to a University of London degree, making a combined award of BA Hons (London) DNC.

'New model'

Professor AC Grayling, the philosopher who will be the college's first Master, secured millions of pounds of funding from investors to set up the institution.

He said: "Our priorities at the college will be excellent teaching quality, excellent ratios of teachers to students, and a strongly supportive and responsive learning environment.

"Our students will be challenged to develop as skilled, informed and reflective thinkers, and will receive an education to match that aspiration."

Prof Grayling is a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

The college claims to offer a "new model of higher education for the humanities in the UK".

Students can apply immediately and assisted places will be offered to 20% of the first year's intake.

Applicants need to meet the University of London minimum entrance requirements and be fully competent in English.

'Entrench inequality'

The college said its selection process will not be computerised, with each application considered "individually, personally and on its merits".

It also has scholarships and "exhibition schemes" to "ensure that finance should not be a barrier to any talented UK student".

But the University and College Union (UCU) said the launch of the new college - and state funding cuts for arts, humanities and social sciences - would result in the subjects becoming the preserve of a "select few".

UCU general secretary Sally Hunt said: "While many would love the opportunity to be taught by the likes of AC Grayling and Richard Dawkins, at £18,000 a go it seems it won't be the very brightest but those with the deepest pockets who are afforded the chance.

"The launch of this college highlights the government's failure to protect art and humanities and is further proof that its university funding plans will entrench inequality within higher education," she said.

The government has set fees in England's public universities at a maximum of £9,000 from September next year.

Priority plan for poorest pupils

27 May 2011 Last updated at 12:01 GMT One in seven pupils failed to get a place at their first choice of secondary school this year Academies and free schools in England may be allowed to give priority to the poorest pupils when allocating places, under a new proposed admissions code.

The rules, published for consultation, also allow all schools to give priority to teachers' children.

The government said it wanted a simpler, fairer code and it would let good schools expand more easily.

But teaching unions warned the changes would "create another generation of haves and have-nots".

The admissions code covers entry to all state schools, most controversially, the basis on which places are allocated in popular, oversubscribed schools.

School admissions remain highly competitive in some areas, with one in seven pupils failing to get a place at their first choice of secondary school this year.

There are also concerns about a shortage of primary school places in the next few years in some areas, with London predicting a shortfall of about 70,000 over the next four years.

'Sharp-elbowed parents'

Education Secretary Michael Gove said the old code, which was 130 pages long, was "bureaucratic and unfair".

The new version is just 50 pages, and includes a range of changes he said would help "give all children the chance of world-class schools".

The proposals include:

Allow free schools set up by parents and community groups, and academies - state schools outside local authority control - to give priority to children eligible for free schools meals (those whose parents earn less than £16,000 a year)Allow schools to give priority to the children of their own teachers and other staff, something which was stopped under LabourAllow popular schools to expand without permission from local authorities or the education secretaryAllow primary schools to increase infant class sizes beyond 30 pupils in order to take in twins and children whose parents are serving in the armed forcesRemove the explicit ban on admissions authorities drawing catchment areas and selecting feeder schools in such as way as to disadvantage children from deprived areasBan local authorities from using area-wide lotteriesAlter the appeals process to make it "cheaper and less burdensome"Improve the way places are allocated to children who move area in the middle of an academic year

Mr Gove says the existing system needed to change because it "rationed good schools" and with wealthier families able to go private or move house, "the poorest are often left with the worst schools".

"Good schools should be able to grow and we need more of them," he said, having argued earlier in the week that allowing popular schools to expand more easily would increase the amount of good school places.

Journalist Toby Young, who is setting up one of the first free schools, said he would want his governors to take advantage of the proposal to allow schools to set aside places for pupils on free school meals, if it is implemented.

He said the idea was welcome for free schools and academies that were "worried about places being monopolised by middle class children".

'Spiral of decline'

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said the proposals would not improve social mobility and would have a "damaging effect" on pupils from the most deprived areas.

In April, the coalition's "pupil premium" came into effect, under which schools receive an extra £430 per year for every pupil on free school meals that they teach.

ASCL general secretary Brian Lightman said this would "hardly be enough of an incentive or a supplement for schools to provide the additional support that these pupils so often need".

And allowing popular schools to expand would "create another generation of haves and have-nots".

"Those schools left with the most challenging pupils, who need the most intensive support, will suffer a slow spiral of decline and their pupils will lose out on life chances," he said.

And the NASUWT teaching union pointed out that the rules would allow grammar schools to expand without having to run local consultations.

"Forget about selection by the back door. This is selection by the front door," said general secretary Chris Keates.

Separately, the government said that it would, on a case by case basis, consider allowing free schools set up by parents to give priority to the children of those who founded them.

This is not included in the new code, but would be written into each school's funding agreement with the government.

'Reducing complexity'

Coalition ministers have long said they wanted to shorten and simplify the existing code.

Outgoing chief schools adjudicator, Ian Craig, said he was "pleased" at the publication of the new code.

"Reducing the complexity and making it easier for parents to understand without removing the safeguards for vulnerable groups is essential to our admissions system," he said.

He had warned in November that slimming down the code could risk "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" and reducing it to "a useless document".

The government is also altering the school admissions appeals process in the Education Bill currently before Parliament.

The Bill would limit the Office of the Schools Adjudicator to investigating specific complaints, rather than wider issues where it suspects there may be a problem.

The body would, however, be able to accept complaints from a wider range of people and its remit would be expanded to cover academies.

The government says this will reduce bureaucracy without affecting fairness, but Labour has warned that such changes could result in reduced scrutiny and an increase in "selection by the back door".

'Impossible question' on AS exam

2 June 2011 Last updated at 18:14 GMT By Angela Harrison Education correspondent, BBC News Students will not be disadvantaged, the exam body says An "unfortunate error" meant maths students were set a question that was impossible to answer in an AS-level exam.

Just under 6,800 teenagers took the paper - set by the OCR exam body - last Thursday.

OCR has apologised, saying it will make sure candidates are not disadvantaged by the mistake.

But some students writing on social networking sites have been calling for the test to be re-run.

The error was in an exam paper taken in 335 schools and other exam centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Stress

The question carried eight marks out of 72 being awarded for the paper.

Candidate Thomas Fay, who contacted the BBC News website, said he had been distressed to find a question that appeared "impossible".

"This threw me in the exam and many people found this to cause much added stress in the exam," he added.

Continue reading the main story

We very much regret that there was a mistake... and that our quality assurance procedures failed to identify this error”

End Quote OCR spokeswoman "Many people are worried that the mistake made by the examining board will severely affect the mark and grade they achieve in the paper. For many this was a final exam and will most likely influence final grades and university admission."

Dozens of other students have messaged the BBC News website to voice their anger and fears about their grades.

Aron De Vos, 17, from St Albans, said: "I spent a good 15 minutes trying to answer that question. I was getting very frustrated about why I couldn't get the answer.

"I want to retake that exam. I can't believe how much time was wasted on a question where we were only able to get zero marks."

OCR has said it deeply regrets the "unfortunate error" and says it has a range of procedures in place to ensure candidates are not disadvantaged.

Review

A spokeswoman said: "We very much regret that there was a mistake... and that our quality assurance procedures failed to identify this error.

"Because we have been alerted to this so early, we are able to take this error into account when marking the paper. We will also take it into account when setting the grade boundaries. We have sent a letter to all schools and colleges explaining in more detail what we shall do.

"We do apologise again that this has happened."

The exam body says it is not going to discount the question from the marking, because that might disadvantage candidates who spent a lot of time trying to answer it.

Students will be awarded points for their attempts to work out the question and measures are also in place which are designed to recognise that other candidates may have discovered the error quickly, OCR says.

OCR released full details of the error - on paper "Decision Mathematics 1" - as follows:

The question as printed asked candidates to verify the shortest route, for two given conditions, giving values of 32.4 + 2x km and 34.2 + x km. These values should have been 34.3 + 2x km and 36.1 + x km respectively. The error was not to have included twice the journey between A and B (0.9 km) and the journey between F and G (1.0 km) in the values given.

BBC News website readers have been sending in their comments and experiences, a selection of which can be read below:

I did the D1 exam and I remember doing this thinking, "there goes eight marks". The exam was hard enough without an 'impossible' question making it even harder. And, it did stress me and many of my classmates out, even if it was just one question. We came out trying to be as optimistic with our expected results. Sultan Ijaz, Carshalton, Surrey

My son is in his last year of sixth form and has taken this exam. He needs an A in it to get his place at Nottingham for a Pure Maths degree. The question severley affected the whole of his exam, not only did he spend 40 minutes trying to answer that one question, but he also subsequently ran out of time leaving questions unanswered. He cannot retake as he needs his results this summer or faces an extra £21,000 in tuition fees. This could definitley cost my son his uni place. Victoria Malone, Caddington, Bedfordshire

I took this paper last Thursday. This particular question was worth eight marks which is over 10% of the paper. I just thought it was very hard rather than being impossible. Given the choice I would prefer to retake the paper. John Wheal, Colchester

Having spent a long time on this question I resorted to crossing out all of my working out. The amount of time I spent meant I wasn't able to answer the rest of the exam paper to the best of my ability. The only logical option I could see for OCR is to put out another exam paper quickly or my application to university will be extremely hindered due to this being 33% of my A-Level grade. It's ridiculous, how can the highest marked question on the paper not be double/triple checked? Tom, Scunthorpe

I'm a student who sat this exam and I spent ages on this very question, continually getting the right answer (but not the one they stated). I'm annoyed and yet grimly satisfied to be proven right, but that won't get back the time I wasted trying it again and again, which certainly compromised my efforts on the rest of the paper. Curtis, Caldicot

I took the exam and it was horrible. I needed to get a high mark to meet my Cambridge offer but that question put me off so badly that I'm not sure if I have made it. You expect examining boards not to make such mistakes, on which your future relies upon, but on this occasion they have failed. Anand, Ashby

It was a terrible exam, and I regretfully, burst into tears after the exam in front of my maths teacher. After learning that the exam board had made such a careless mistake, a mistake that would affect the lives of thousands of students, you can understand our frustration, anger and disappointment. I feel it is within the best interests of the students that we are able to sit a new Decision Mathematics 1 exam to recitfy the foolish mistakes of OCR. Kalpita, York

This is a disgrace. My daughter realised there was a mistake and moved on, so didn't put a lot of working into the question. I honestly don't believe that a statistical approach to marking this question does anything than assure that the results distribution matches an average of previous results. It does nothing to reassure an individual they weren't disadvantaged over another student sitting a different board's exam or module who also needs the same grade to get to university. Ian McGregor, Horsham

Can't see what the fuss is all about. The question is worth eight points from a potential 72. Don't re-run the test, ignore the question and mark the paper out of 64. It's basic maths, not rocket science, although some people do like making life needlessly difficult. Dave, Bridgend

India: The next university superpower?

2 March 2011 Last updated at 21:32 GMT By Yojana Sharma Asia Editor, University World News Students queue for application forms for Delhi University - an institution with 300,000 students India has ambitious plans to increase graduate numbers in a way which would give it the size and status of an education superpower.

The figures are staggering. India's government speaks of increasing the proportion of young people going to university from 12% at present to 30% by 2025 - approaching the levels of many Western countries.

It wants to expand its university system to meet the aspirations of a growing middle class, to widen access, and become a "knowledge powerhouse".

It will mean increasing the country's student population from 12 million to over 30 million, and will put it on course to becoming one of the world's largest education systems.

"We will very likely be number two if not number one in terms of numbers," says Pawan Agarwal, a former civil servant and author of Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future.

With US enrolment stagnating and the UK cutting back on university places, "Indian graduates will become more visible globally, particularly in technical and engineering fields", Mr Agarwal predicts.

'Great leap forward'

KN Panikkar, vice chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, describes India's higher education spending as undergoing a "great leap forward".

The amount of money in the central budget for higher education in the current five year plan (2010-2015) is nine times the amount of the previous five years.

But there is a steep hill to climb. India's National Knowledge Commission estimated the country needs 1,500 universities compared to around 370 now.

Hundreds of new institutions are being set up, including large new public universities in each state. The number of prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Management (IIMs) are being expanded from seven to 15.

India's private university sector is also growing rapidly, particularly in professional education in information technology, engineering, medicine and management where there is huge demand from the burgeoning middle classes.

But that will not be enough. To bridge the gap the government last year tabled legislation to invite foreign universities to set up branch campuses. The Foreign Providers Bill is currently making its way through parliament.

'Fever pitch'

Last year there were reports of up to 50 foreign universities being interested in setting up in India. The hype reached fever pitch in November during the visit of US President Barack Obama and a large group of US university presidents.

Continue reading the main story

If only 1% of the population can afford the fees, then it will be very serious for the country in terms of equity”

End Quote KN Panikkar Kerala State Higher Education Council UK Higher Education minister David Willetts and the largest-ever Canadian delegation were also in the country, enthusiastically talking of university partnerships.

Some foreign universities are already in place. The UK's Leeds Metropolitan University provides management degrees on a 36-acre campus in Bhopal in central India.

Lancaster University runs courses at the GD Goenka World Institute - a 69-acre site near Delhi. Both institutions opened in 2009 as joint ventures with Indian non-profit partners under existing laws.

Some bring faculty and staff from their home institutions, but even the most prestigious public institutions, including the IITs, are struggling to fill top faculty positions and teacher student ratios are deteriorating.

Foreign institutions able to lure staff with higher salaries will make the situation worse, detractors of the Foreign Providers Bill point out.

Mr Panikkar says foreign and private institutions are not the answer. "If only 1% of the population can afford the fees, then it will be very serious for the country in terms of equity."

Fair access

Access is an important issue for the government which came to power because the benefits of India's rapid economic growth were seen to have bypassed the country's poor.

Students in the chemistry department at the private Amity University in Noida

While more than 95% of children now attend primary school, just 40% attend secondary school, according to the World Bank. That in itself will limit growth in university enrolment.

The World Bank has said India's economic success cannot be sustained without major investment in education, including higher education, with public spending on the sector still lagging behind countries like China and Brazil.

But the gold-rush mentality has dissipated. The Foreign Providers Bill is stuck in a parliament that has done little business since a telecommunications corruption scandal erupted last year.

"There has been some toning down of expectations of foreign universities," said Rahul Choudaha, associate director, World Education Services in New York and a close observer of the sector.

"The public university system in many countries is in crisis, facing serious budget cuts. They are not ready to invest money in partnerships."

Some "gold diggers" were dissuaded as the government made it clear for-profit companies would not be allowed to exploit India's thirst for higher education.

Unlike Singapore and China, the Indian government does not want to appear to favour foreign institutions by providing public money or large land grants.

Duke University, based in North Carolina in the US, has been interested in India for some time.

"We want to develop Duke as a globally-networked university. The best researchers are those connected globally," says Gregory Jones, Duke's vice president and vice provost for global strategy.

'Eastward shift'

But its Shanghai campus will be in operation first. "They [Shanghai] were willing to donate and build the first phase at their expense so it was a financially-viable proposition for us," said Mr Jones.

"It is not yet clear how we will develop our presence in India. It is a complicated reform bill."

An eastward shift in the geography of science and technology is a major draw as international companies set up research and development sites in India and China.

"We are tapping into the research potential of these Asian countries," says Professor Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering.

The prestigious US institution has teamed up with India's Shiv Nadar Foundation to open an engineering college in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

But these joint ventures are not fully-fledged overseas campuses. "Only a handful of overseas universities are thinking about that seriously," said Mr Agarwal. "But even if they go ahead it will not be enough. They will only increase capacity for hundreds of Indian students, not millions."

That means huge public spending on colleges outside the cities, says Mr Panikkar who has written extensively on social justice in higher education. He believes the enrolment targets are too ambitious given limited public resources and bottlenecks in staffing and infrastructure.

"What is achievable is adding perhaps 10 million students to existing capacity in the next five to seven years," he says.

That would still be a major achievement, but some way from making India an education superpower.

Get with the program

Peter Price tries a ?15 computer that could get children into programming

As computers become ever more complicated, there are concerns that schools and universities are not teaching the basic programming skills that underpin some of Britain's most successful industries.

The UK's video games sector is bigger than either its film or music industries with over £2bn in global sales.

Just one best-selling game series, Tomb Raider made by British company Eidos has had sales of over 35 million.

Peter Molyneux, creative director of Microsoft Game Studios, EuropeIt actually started back in 1989 when me and a friend sat down and we had this crazy idea for a game. It took about nine months to develop, mainly because we were lazy.

This game came out and was fantastically successful and we could eventually afford to eat.

The UK has been amazingly influential in the history of computer games, no doubt about it. We've had a rocky ride of being the most influential on Earth to dipping down when things got a bit tough, but guess what's happening now?

Just around where I live in Guildford, there are around four or five small developers just set up in the last 12 months so I suspect there's some great talent just waiting to sprout up there.

There are so many more independent gamers like I was 22 years ago who are in the same situation. I can already see some games coming up you can point to and say 'those are going to be super successful'.

I am absolutely convinced that the huge creative talent that is going to help this industry move forward is in the independent gaming community at the moment.

But with games becoming increasingly complicated to make, the programmers used to make the games are in high demand.

And there are concerns about where the talent of the future is going to come from.

From primary school to university, the skill of writing even basic programs has been largely displaced by lessons in how to use a computer.

"[Children] learn about Word and Powerpoint and Excel. They learn how to use the applications but don't have the skills to make them," says Ian Livingstone, life president of Eidos and government skills champion.

"It's the difference between reading and writing. We're teaching them how to read, we're not teaching them how to write.

"The narrowness of how we teach children about computers risks creating a generation of digital illiterates."

Livingstone is campaigning for computer science to become a separate subject on the school national curriculum. And its current omission is something that the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) believes is having a drastic impact on the digital industries.

"This skills gap is a threat not just to the future of the video games industry but also to any business that has computer technology at its core," says Daniel Wood, of Ukie.

"Some companies [in the UK] are actually turning away work because they don't have the staff with the skills and it's only going to get worse."

There is no shortage of university courses related to computer games - 84 institutions are offering 228 courses between them in 2011. But few match up to what the industry needs.

Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the creative industry currently only gives accreditation to 10 of these courses.

'Bums on seats'

While keen to point out that not being accredited is not an absolute indication of whether a course is good or bad, Skillset says that a number of university courses are not up to scratch.

Between two thirds and three quarters of courses that apply to the council get refused.

Tomb Raider is one of the world's most successful games franchises

"The accreditation process is really rigorous and robust," says Saint John Walker, Skillset's computer games manager.

"It means those who get through really have been through the mill in terms of being inspected.

Walker fears universities are too focussed on attracting students to fill their courses, not on giving them skills for the workplace.

"Some of our industry's council call it the 'bums on seats' mentality. In other words, a course has to be popular to make economic sense."

"You'd imagine that the university detects a demand and would speak to the industry and ensure that the course had the industry at the centre of it, but unfortunately that's not the way it happens.

A £15 solution

Many think that a return to the days where simpler computers filled the classroom could change things. When all computers were basic, children could understand them more easily and mess around with them from a very early age.

"Even 20 years ago, the BBC Micro was in schools and was the cornerstone of computing in the classroom and when people went home from school or work, they also had their Spectrum so could also do programming," says Livingstone.

One foundation in particular is looking to bring on that change. A tiny device called the Raspberry Pi is a whole computer squeezed onto a single circuit board, about the same size as a USB disc.

Computer games in the past required a lot less code that modern games

It costs around £15 and can be plugged into a TV with the aim of making a computer cheap and simple enough to allow anyone to write programmes.

"Hopefully it will bring a solution to a generation of kids who can have the advantages that I had as a kid so they can learn to program and do great things," says David Braben of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Although computer programming is not on the national curriculum, many schools have taken the decision themselves to bring it back into the classroom.

"A lot of the children don't sort of understand the world of Commodores and Ataris back in the 80s," says Ian Addison, of St John the Baptist Primary School in Hampshire.

"What we're trying to do with our game design is show them that you can teach them games, you can make some games and you can create them and share them with other people.

"Some of the children get into computers and they're getting interested in how games work. They're only young - our eldest are 11 - but if we can inspire a few of them, then we've done a good job."

Tony Blair's global ideas battle

7 March 2011 Last updated at 01:03 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Tony Blair: "We adjust or we are swept away" Tony Blair's faith foundation works with universities in countries including the US, China, the UK, Canada and Sierra Leone. He also lectures at Yale. Mr Blair gave his views on university globalisation to the BBC News website.

You've talked in recent speeches about the accelerating pace of ideas and how quickly changes in belief and events can follow.

Is the globalisation of higher education part of this battle of ideas, in a kind of arms race of values and cultures?

"I would say it is not only part of the battle, but in fact the frontlines. When I am asked to define the leading characteristic of today's world, I say: It's speed of change. We adjust or we are swept away.

"Gone are the days of ideological disputes between political systems. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we have seen economic ideology recede into the background.

"No one today disputes the power of capitalism - the only question anyone is asking is to what extent does government regulate otherwise free markets.

"Instead, the debate has become focused on how open or closed our societies should be - how understanding we are of differing opinions, cultures, and customs both inside and outside of our respective communities.

'Fight ideas with ideas'

"This is also where religious ideology comes to the fore. The role of religion has been both enormously positive, which a lot of people fail to appreciate, and negative, which more people are aware of. But the nature of the debate in both the secular and religious areas are ideological.

"You fight ideas with ideas. It is now up to institutions of higher education to engage directly on these issues - not only their students, but current world leaders in politics, finance, and international diplomacy, along with the general public.

"If universities begin to foster this kind of dialogue in the public sphere, they will create a safe and objective space for these questions to be addressed and explored, which will not only produce a better informed public but also force advocates of exclusive political or religious ideologies to support their positions with rigorous and convincing arguments - no small feat."

How much will the economies of the future depend on the international competition between university systems? I'm thinking of how global firms such as Google and Facebook have grown so quickly from higher education.

"It already depends on competition between university systems. If you look at the world's current and emerging superpowers, nearly all have either well-established or are currently establishing university systems that will help them compete in the global economy.

"The three largest higher education systems in the world are in the United States, China and India."

How do you see the impact of globalisation on the international university system?

"I see globalisation's impact on the international university system in four ways.

"The first is that universities are increasingly eager to connect with others around the world on sustained and continuous projects and partnerships.

"Although conferences and joint-research programmes have existed for some time, we are now seeing a desire on the part of universities to enter into long-term partnerships with other universities.

"I was just visiting one of the lead universities in our Faith and Globalisation Initiative, Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, which has joint-degree programmes with schools such as Carnegie-Mellon in the US, the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, and Reutlingen University in Germany.

"Two of our lead universities, Yale and the National University of Singapore, have recently announced plans to establish a jointly-run school in Singapore that will open in the autumn of 2013.

"The second is that universities are increasingly aware of the multitude of global perspectives that exist on every academic issue.

"Given the increasing amount of connectivity between universities, along with the ease of accessing information, no longer can any university or faculty ignore the wealth of approaches to today's most pressing academic questions.

"So you'll find scholars from Europe and the United States, two areas that have traditionally been disdainful of research and theory produced elsewhere, increasingly taking into account the work of academics from South America and Asia.

"What this means for students is that they are no longer exclusively exposed to scholarship produced from people whose lives and biases mirrored their own, but are now forced to consider new perspectives that might challenge what they'd been previously taught.

"Thirdly, globalisation has made university campuses more diverse than ever before.

"I've taught a class called Faith and Globalisation at Yale for the past three years and every year the class included students from all walks of life and from all around the world.

"If you look at photographs from Yale's graduating classes 50 years ago, everyone looks the same. And that's because, by and large, they were all from the same towns, went to the same prep-schools, and were going to work at the same companies.

Tony Blair saw the "virtual university" at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico last month

"When I gave a speech at Yale in 2008, the student body looked more like delegates from the United Nations. This also means that universities are now engaged in a global competition for students, and no one can rest simply on their reputation.

"Finally, the technological advances of globalisation mean that more and more people are given access to higher education than ever before.

"Although internet learning might not be a perfect substitute for the classroom experience, the simple fact is that there are millions of people who have been excluded from the university experience due to geographical isolation and/or financial restraints.

"One of the Faith Foundation's partner universities, Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico, has an amazing virtual university through which they have connected 13 campuses across the country as well as individuals in remote areas to give them the opportunity to get a university education."

Will globalisation in universities be any fairer to the world's poor than economic globalisation?

"It certainly can be and I think it is currently leaning in that direction. As I mentioned earlier, the example of Tecnologico de Monterrey is encouraging.

"Through the use of the internet, they have been able to provide people in remote parts of Mexico with access to university courses through their Virtual University.

"Yale University has a site called Open Yale on which they give access to video and audio recordings of semester-long classes, along with reading assignments and transcripts of the lectures - all entirely free.

"So anyone who wants to take Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Professor Donald Kagan, or Financial Markets with Professor Robert Schiller, now can.

Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The city was once known as the "Athens of Africa"

"In addition, one of the things that has become incredibly clear in working with the universities involved in the Faith and Globalisation Initiative is that the world's richest and most rigorous universities are deeply committed to capacity development within countries and institutions that have not been able to benefit from the same social or economic advantages.

"Recently Fourah Bay College at the University of Sierra Leone became the newest partner of our university programme. Fourah Bay is an amazing institution. In fact, my dad taught there in the 1960s.

"But as a result of the civil war and other problems Sierra Leone has faced, Fourah Bay has not benefited from the economic and institutional development like universities such as Yale or McGill.

"As a matter of fact, Yale's endowment is nearly four times the size of Sierra Leone's GDP. And when I was at McGill to give a lecture to their Religion and Globalisation course, I had lunch with a selection of faculty members from around the university - all of whom were adamant that we bring more schools like Fourah Bay into the initiative.

"It wasn't enough for them that we reach students at the world's most acknowledged universities. They demanded that we reach out to institutions that had been less fortunate than themselves, to provide them with teacher training, to give their students more opportunities to interact with other students around the world and to hopefully play a role in transforming the wider society.

"So if other universities have faculty members that are anything like those at McGill, I would say the future looks promising."

Graduates - the new measure of power

2 March 2011 Last updated at 00:16 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Watch: How Aalto University in Finland is teaching Chinese students in English

At the beginning of the last century, the power of nations might have been measured in battleships and coal.

In this century it's as likely to be graduates.

There has been an unprecedented global surge in the numbers of young people going to university.

Among the developed OECD countries, graduation rates have almost doubled since the mid-1990s.

China's plans are not so much an upward incline as a vertical take-off.

In 1998, there were only about a million students in China. Within a decade, it had become the biggest university system in the world.

Figures last month from China's education ministry reported more than 34 million graduates in the past four years. By 2020 there will be 35.5 million students enrolled.

The president of Yale described this as the fastest such expansion in human history.

Inextricably linked with this expansion has been another phenomenon - the globalisation of universities.

Global networks

There are more universities operating in other countries, recruiting students from overseas, setting up partnerships, providing online degrees and teaching in other languages than ever before.

Chinese students are taking degrees taught in English in Finnish universities; the Sorbonne is awarding French degrees in Abu Dhabi; US universities are opening in China and South Korean universities are switching teaching to English so they can compete with everyone else.

Capturing the moment: South Korea has turned itself into a global player in higher education

It's like one of those board games where all the players are trying to move on to everyone else's squares.

It's not simply a case of western universities looking for new markets. Many countries in the Middle East and Asia are deliberately seeking overseas universities, as a way of fast-forwarding a research base.

In Qatar, the purpose-built Education City now has branches of eight overseas universities, with more to follow. Shanghai is set to be another magnet for international campuses.

'Idea capitals'

This global network is the way of the future, says John Sexton, president of New York University.

"There's a world view that universities, and the most talented people in universities, will operate beyond sovereignty.

"Much like in the renaissance in Europe, when the talent class and the creative class travelled among the great idea capitals, so in the 21st century, the people who carry the ideas that will shape the future will travel among the capitals.

"But instead of old European names it will be names like Shanghai and Abu Dhabi and London and New York. Those universities will be populated by those high-talent people."

New York University, one of the biggest private universities in the US, has campuses in New York and Abu Dhabi, with plans for another in Shanghai. It also has a further 16 academic centres around the world.

Mr Sexton sets out a different kind of map of the world, in which universities, with bases in several cities, become the hubs for the economies of the future, "magnetising talent" and providing the ideas and energy to drive economic innovation.

Universities are also being used as flag carriers for national economic ambitions - driving forward modernisation plans.

For some it's been a spectacularly fast rise. According to the OECD, in the 1960s South Korea had a similar national wealth to Afghanistan. Now it tops international education league tables and has some of the highest-rated universities in the world.

The Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea was only founded in 1986 - and is now in the top 30 of the Times Higher's global league table, elbowing past many ancient and venerable institutions.

It also wants to compete on an international stage so the university has decided that all its graduate programmes should be taught in English rather than Korean.

Spending power

Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for International Higher Education, based in Boston College in the United States, says governments want to use universities to upgrade their workforce and develop hi-tech industries.

The first French-speaking university in the Gulf, a branch of the Sorbonne, was opened last month

"Universities are being seen as a key to the new economies, they're trying to grow the knowledge economy by building a base in universities," says Professor Altbach.

Families, from rural China to eastern Europe, are also seeing university as a way of helping their children to get higher-paid jobs. A growing middle-class in India is pushing an expansion in places.

Universities also stand to gain from recruiting overseas. "Universities in the rich countries are making big bucks," he says. This international trade is worth at least $50 billion a year, he estimates, the lion's share currently being claimed by the US.

If there are parallels with economic and political rivalries, the US remains the academic superpower, not least because of the raw wealth of its top universities.

Despite its investments taking a hammering from the financial crisis, Harvard sits on an endowment worth $27.4bn and spends more than $3.5bn a year.

It means that for every one dollar spent by a leading European university such as the London School Economics, Harvard can spend almost $10.

Even the poorest Ivy League university in the US will have an endowment bigger than the gross domestic product of many African countries.

Facebook generation

The success of the US system is not just about funding, says Professor Altbach. It's also because it's well run and research is effectively organised. "Of course there are lots of lousy institutions in the US, but overall the system works well."

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Developed economies are already highly dependent on universities and if anything that reliance will increase”

End Quote David Willetts UK universities minister The status of the US system has been bolstered by the link between its university research and developing hi-tech industries. Icons of the internet-age such Google and Facebook grew out of US campuses.

"Developed economies are already highly dependent on universities and if anything that reliance will increase," says the UK's universities minister, David Willetts.

And he says that globalisation in higher education is increasing in pace and "going to go a lot further".

"The rapid increase in international students, not just in the UK but in other countries with high quality universities, is a case in point.

"Universities are internationalised along other fronts too - for example, in the research that they do, which often has greater impact when conducted in collaboration with institutions in other countries."

University of laptop

Technology, much of it hatched on university campuses, is also changing higher education and blurring national boundaries.

Online services such as Apple's iTunes U gives public access to lectures from more than 800 universities and more than 300 million have been downloaded. And where else would a chemistry lecture get to be a chart topper?

New York University in Abu Dhabi: The university's president says this is the era of "global networks"

It raises many questions too. What are the expectations of this Facebook generation? They might have degrees and be able to see what is happening on the other side of the world, but will there be enough jobs to match their ambitions?

Who is going to pay for such an expanded university system? And what about those who will struggle to afford a place?

But Mr Willetts says that globalisation is having a "positive impact" for students, academics and employers.

And Professor Sexton remains optimistic that globalism will be about co-operation as much as competition and he summons up the forward-looking attitude of immigrants arriving in New York.

"The immigrant is always looking forwards to a better tomorrow, not looking back to a golden age."