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."

Continue reading the main story

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."

New weapon against exam cheating

27 May 2011 Last updated at 01:06 GMT By Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter Exam boards say cheating will not be tolerated A new hi-tech weapon against those who cheat their way to exam success has been unveiled.

The new computerised screening device flags up where candidates get the same scores in written answers.

Statistical analysis is already widely used in multiple-choice tests to catch out cheats.

Cambridge Assessment, which runs three English exam boards, said its new tool would send a message that cheating is not tolerated.

The screening works by analysing data gleaned from the exam boards' online marking system.

The system also allows assessors to manipulate and analyse the data produced from the papers.

'Malpractice investigation'

The programme then flags up any unusual patterns in answers question by question.

A Cambridge Assessment spokeswoman said: "If two or three candidates are getting exactly the same marks for questions, then possible cases of cheating can be investigated.

"If a lot of candidates are getting the same marks then an investigation for malpractice can be set up."

Exam board OCR's head of compliance, Stephen Hunt, said: "Another weapon in our armoury is always welcome.

"This new screening service fills a gap in our ability to detect malpractice and will be a handy addition to the resources used to maintain the integrity of an exam."

University of Cambridge International Examinations' compliance unit manager, Ben Sennitt, said: "Cambridge does not tolerate cheating. We use a wide range of methods to detect and prevent malpractice during examinations.

"Students who cheat or assist others to cheat risk having their examination entries voided and their grades withheld."

NI pupils to find out school choices

28 May 2011 Last updated at 08:50 GMT John O'Dowd said some students will be disappointed. More than 23,000 children across Northern Ireland will find out on Saturday which post primary school they will transfer to in September.

Around 9,000 of those pupils will be going to grammar schools.

Transfer test results were delivered to students around the country back in February.

The Education Minister John O'Dowd said if parents are unhappy they can challenge the decision.

"There are a number of appeal mechanisms available to parents," he added.

"Those are available on the Department of Education's website if they wish to appeal the decision that has been made around their child not getting their first choice of school.

"There will always be disappointment. It's how we manage that disappointment."

Mr O'Dowd urged parents to talk to teachers at schools and to check out the department's website for more information.

Universities ranked on reputation

10 March 2011 Last updated at 03:05 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Harvard, the richest and now the most highly-regarded university in the world Harvard University in the United States has been ranked as the university with the best "reputation" in the world.

The Times Higher Education magazine has listed 200 top universities based on how they are regarded by a panel of international academics.

In third place, Cambridge is the top rated among UK universities.

In the wake of the LSE's embarrassment over links with Libya, reputation has been seen as a valuable but fragile commodity for universities.

Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, stepped down because he feared the institution's reputation had suffered from the associations with the Gaddafi regime.

Overseas students

Global league tables have spread across higher education - and have become important to marketing courses to the three million international students.

But this latest table is different in that it measures how universities are regarded, rather than how they actually performed.

A subjective, word-of-mouth quality such as "reputation" has genuine economic value for universities, said Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

"Reputation is not an illusion, though it might be more vulnerable and fragile than performance by objective indicators," said Prof Marginson.

Based on the views of 13,000 academics around the world, it confirms the status of the big US universities, which dominate this league table.

Continue reading the main story 1. Harvard2. MIT3. Cambridge4. California, Berkeley5. Stanford6. Oxford7. Princeton8. Tokyo9. Yale10. California Institute of Technology

Source: Times Higher Education

Seven of the top 10 are US universities, headed by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Furthermore, 14 of the top 20 are from the US.

Cambridge is the highest ranking UK university in the list, in third place, with Oxford ranked as sixth.

The LSE, in a table drawn up before its problems with Libya, is in 37th place.

For students applying to university, reputation might be hard to quantify, but was an important part of the appeal, said the president of Cambridge University's students' union, Rahul Mansigani.

"Reputation makes a huge difference. If there is a perception that somewhere is brilliant, it will get lots of good people applying whether it's true or not," he said.

Factors such as a sense of history and the presence of leading academics were part of the reputation of Cambridge, he said.

But with worries about university links with dubious regimes, he warned about the need to protect the "moral reputation" of a university.

"They need to be very wary of who they deal with - with no compromise over academic freedom," he said.

Global reach

Reputation is also a highly valued prize for universities such as MIT, ranked in second place - with particular importance for an institution's international reach.

So much so that that they might have a bigger global reputation than in some places nearer home.

"For a place like MIT, which is primarily about science and technology, reputation is critical," said Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, director and associate dean of MIT's International Students Office.

"We have a very good reputation in countries that value science and technological education. MIT really resonates in most Asian countries.

"Whereas you could find a small rural town in the US, where they might not have ever heard of MIT - your average person in China who has had any education will know what it means."

Sally Hunt, head of the UCU lecturers' union in the UK, warned that reputation should not be relied upon as an alternative to financial investment.

"We will soon get found out if we think we can trade on reputation alone," she said.

Phil Baty, editor of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, said: "In an ever more competitive global market... a university's reputation for academic excellence is crucial."

Turning knowledge into the new oil

18 March 2011 Last updated at 00:01 GMT By Gary Eason ­ Katy Watson, from Middle East Business Report, on Qatar's drive to become a 'global knowledge hub'

It might seem like pouring water onto sand - almost literally - but the Gulf kingdom of Qatar is banking on a remarkable transformation in its fortunes.

The small but fabulously wealthy state is using its hydrocarbon earnings to try to convert itself into a global knowledge hub.

Billions of pounds are being pumped into a 2,500-acre complex for 80 educational, research, science and community development organisations, under the umbrella name of Education City.

The astonishing physical transformation of the desert is nothing compared with the long-term ambition to be a cradle of innovation, based in the Middle East but global in scope and impact.

The country knows that its hydrocarbon resources, which have given it the second highest per capita income in the world, will eventually run out.

"Future economic success will increasingly depend on the ability of the Qatari people to deal with a new international order that is knowledge-based and extremely competitive," says the country's proposals set out in its National Vision.

Qatar is a desert peninsula of only 4,500 square miles (11,655 sq km), with a native population of under a million - about as many as Norfolk in the UK.

Rising economies

It is up against some of the biggest emerging players in the world economy, notably China and soon India, with their vast physical and human resources and, increasingly, higher education campuses.

Texas A&M University in Qatar launched its first masters degree courses this year

The driving force is Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development.

So far it has attracted some notable US universities - Georgetown, Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth and Northwestern - as well as the French business school HEC Paris.

Education City's associate vice-president for higher education, Dr Ahmad Hasnah, says they have been strategically selected to span the broad spectrum of educational subjects in order to offer students a wide range of hard and soft skills.

And in turn they gain from being in this sort of knowledge hub, he says.

"Leading universities - centres of excellence in their own dedicated and different fields of learning - sit next to each other, within arm's reach, offering unique cross-fertilisation opportunities," he says.

They are also a stone's throw from leading research facilities and blue chip organisations.

The latest addition, and the first from the UK, is University College London. The UCL Q campus will focus on conservation, museum studies and archaeology.

UCL Q intends to begin teaching postgraduate courses this year and relocate some research projects of relevance to the region.

Exporting experts

One obvious draw - in a time of financial cutbacks in the UK - is that the funding is being put up by Qatar Foundation and the kingdom's museums authority.

Professor Michael Worton, who co-ordinates UCL's global policies and strategies, insists that it is vital to the institution's reputation that standards be maintained.

Liberal Arts and Science Building: Qatar is turning itself into a regional hub for higher education

He detects a shift in attitudes towards the purpose of higher education. This is partly from students who are more mobile, more demanding, more focused on employability.

And he says the interchange of ideas works both ways. For example, UCL is pioneering two-year masters degrees in another offshoot, its School of Energy and Resources in Adelaide, Australia.

"Building on what we have in London, but not just exporting it in some kind of imperialistic way, we're bringing our expertise in pedagogy, as well as our expertise in the discipline and creating something which is absolutely right for the environment in Australia or Qatar or wherever.

"One of my clear ideas is that things that we're doing overseas we would want to be feeding back in and saying 'look this works here, let's see how we can bring that in in the UK'."

Economic links

Such issues were debated last week at the Going Global conference in Hong Kong, organised by the British Council.

Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar - claimed as the first US medical school to set up overseas

The council's chief executive, Martin Davidson, says: "What is clear is that the strengthening link between economic development and international higher education is leading to a growing emphasis on regional and global collaboration."

He sees many opportunities for UK institutions to export their quality standards and to provide access to a UK qualification for a wider range of students - which incidentally side-steps the row about the issuing of visas to foreign students to travel to the UK itself.

It also provides greater flexibility and choice for students across the world who may not be able to afford to spend several years thousands of miles away from home.

Mr Davidson thinks it important for more British students to go abroad too, at least for part of their courses.

"In the long term, the United Kingdom's economic growth may be threatened if it fails to produce home-grown graduates who understand how to operate in a global market place," he says.

Competing hubs

The constraints imposed by quality thresholds have been observed by John O'Leary, author of the Top Universities Guide.

Game of two halves: Students in Carnegie Mellon's campus in Qatar

He says Education City is full of magnificent buildings, with quite small numbers of students.

"They may expand in time, but neither the universities nor Qatar want them to drop their standards so it's hard to see where large numbers are coming from."

Elsewhere things have not always gone smoothly.

"The host countries, quite reasonably, tend to apply quite a lot of conditions and there have already been some failures where the universities can't make a branch campus work," says Mr O'Leary.

"But Nottingham's campuses in Malaysia and China do well - largely, I think, because graduates get a Nottingham degree and the university uses its own staff."

India has plans to allow overseas universities to set up branch campuses. There is some scepticism about the likely extent of foreign involvement, but given the potential size of the student population, it is likely to draw interest.

"Apart from the Indian Institutes of Technology, none of their universities has made a mark on the world rankings, so you would think that branch campuses would attract a lot of well-qualified applicants as well as having a cheap base to do research," Mr O'Leary said.

And UCL's Michael Worton believes we are seeing an evolution of institutions into first regional, then global specialists - what he calls "mission specificity" - rather than providing a comprehensive range of courses for all students.

"We need to move away from an obsession with, if you like, the vertical hierarchy of international league tables and into much more of a horizontal landscape of diversity - and decide where we want to position ourselves," he says.

"To work out who are we and what are we trying to do, rather than everybody trying to do the same thing."

Going to Harvard from your own bedroom

21 March 2011 Last updated at 03:04 GMT By Merlin John ­ Imperial College in London is making its lectures available online

"In the online world you don't need to fill buildings or lecture theatres with people and you don't need to be trapped into a lecture timetable," says Peter Scott, director of the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute.

The Open University, the UK's open access university, which allows people to study from home in their own time, has been an international pioneer of degree courses online.

The university, with more than 263,000 students in 23 countries, has become a record breaker on the iTunes U service, which provides a digital library of materials for university students and staff.

Instead of music or movies, Apple's iTunes U provides a download service for lectures and resources from universities around the world.

Top universities from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the US to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK have been making their materials available, with no charge to the user.

There have been 31 million downloads of OU materials, more than any other university, representing roughly 10% of all iTunes U downloads. Nearly 90% of these users are from outside the UK.

In this online era, the OU student is also getting younger. A quarter of students are aged under-25 and only 10% are aged 50 or over. That change can only be accelerated as the cost of going to university increases in many countries.

The prospect of learning from Harvard from your own bedroom is getting closer.

Grassroots colleges

But it's not the elite universities where the idea of online study is going to make its biggest impact, suggests Anthony Salcito, Microsoft's US-based vice-president of worldwide education.

Harvard v Yale: Both universities have put free course materials online to be used by anyone

"When talking to folks in places like Dubai and China I thought that the questions and the admiration would be for institutions like Harvard and Stanford.

"However, the actual part of the US education system that is most envied, that other institutions are trying to replicate, is the community college system in the US, founded on a belief that a degree and opportunity are rights for all citizens. And we have got to enable the population of students attending higher education to scale up.

"One of the things about the community college system in the US - Miami Dade College for example - is that it is very connected to employment and the workforce.

"So community colleges typically tune their degrees and their options to the jobs and opportunities of the industries that are in those communities. And that connection between employability and education is what is driving a lot of this change."

Mr Salcito also points to African villagers using the most up-to-date expertise on irrigation from MIT as an example of the consequences of universities opening up their courses and materials.

"What I am most excited about is that the privilege of going to higher education is not something that is connected to the wealthy or to the smartest or most well-equipped students for the future. It is becoming a wider social imperative."

'Self-service degrees'

But will the arrival of online degrees change the way that people study at university?

Lord Jim Knight, former education minister in England, has had a long interest in educational technology.

Continue reading the main story More than 66% of higher education institutions in the US offer online or part-online coursesThe University of Liverpool in the UK has more than 5,000 online students studying in 175 countriesOpen Yale offers a series of free online courses which can be followed by home learners, but without any exams or qualificationsAn open source project, OER Commons, includes free material from universities including Harvard and University of California, BerkeleyMedical students at the University of Leeds have their text books delivered as smartphone applicationsThe type of "self-service" degrees available through the internet are one model, he says, but there are other options that could emerge, such as part-online and part-campus.

"Some people tell me we should be looking at perhaps more of an American model, where you do the first year or two of your degree from home at a community college - in the UK that could be a further education college or even at school - and you only go to finish off when you really need access to the research, your senior lecturer, your director of studies face to face.

"Until that point you can do it at distance, having peer-to-peer learning and using some of the things we are used to, like social networking, for exchanges of ideas and papers," says Lord Knight.

"Why would you go along to a university and hear someone who may or may not be the best in their field when you can go on to iTunes U and hear a lecture by the very best?

"That development of choice and access to quality, and people being digital natives, will, I think, transform things. Whether universities are yet ready to make those changes is another question."

Consumer power

At the Open University, Peter Scott says they are trying to develop services that give students exactly what they want, from face-to-face learning to the fully online experience.

Pocket-sized university: Open University courses on a mobile phone

"We can produce brilliant televisual material and get it to you on YouTube, on iTunes U or even on the web. We don't need the one-to-many model.

"Conventional universities are forced into this one-to-many, someone lecturing to a timetable, because they have buildings to fill... Our materials are designed for you to work with remotely."

While the OU delivers to its students on a range of media, the greatest excitement is being stirred by its performance on iTunes U.

High-quality podcasts and video materials are now the norm, but the number of multimedia books will soon rise to 430. Open one of these on an iPad and you can click on pictures and links to move seamlessly to videos and podcasts.

"If there's music or audio it just plays," says Mr Scott. "I'm so excited, the potential is really great."

Mr Scott agrees that universities can now market their courses globally online, and arrange for support and accreditation locally if required - franchise heaven for institutions.

So does this make "Harvard in your bedroom" more likely?

"Hey, what's Harvard? Is it a brand, is it a couple of people? Think about this. What do you really want? Do you really want to learn? Because I can tell you that the best place to do it is here. It isn't in some Ivy League university. It's right here," says Mr Scott.

Anthony Salcito says online education will be a way of opening up more choice and getting beyond the big brand names of the most exclusive universities.

"As we open up education and technology, the tyranny of the education brand will change and evolve because of the choice that students have," he says.

Merlin John is an educational technology writer and founder of agent4change.net.

Colleges 'complacent' on extremism

6 June 2011 Last updated at 02:23 GMT Home Secretary Theresa May said universities had been unwilling to recognise what was happening on campus Home Secretary Theresa May has criticised universities for their "complacency" in tackling Islamist extremism.

It comes ahead of the publication of the government's revised Prevent counter-terrorism strategy on Tuesday.

Mrs May told the Daily Telegraph she thought there was more universities could do on the issue.

She also said the government would cut funding to any Islamic group that espoused extremist views.

Mrs May told the paper: "I think for too long there's been complacency around universities. I don't think they have been sufficiently willing to recognise what can be happening on their campuses and the radicalisation that can take place.

"I think there is more that universities can do."

The Daily Mail reports that the government's updated strategy has identified 40 English universities where there could be a "particular risk" of radicalisation or recruitment on campus.

It is understood the document also raises concerns over the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and what is seen as an insufficient willingness to tackle extremism.

Mrs May said: "They need to be prepared to stand up and say that organisations that are extreme or support extremism or have extremist speakers should not be part of their grouping."

Prevent was originally launched after the 7 July bombings in 2005 to stop the growth of home-grown terrorism.

Mrs May said that, as a result of the strategy's review of government support, about 20 of the organisations that received funding over the past three years would have their cash withdrawn.

She told the newspaper: "There's more that we will be doing because it is very clear that we are going to be much more focused on effective monitoring and the effectiveness of groups and making sure that they are having an outcome."

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw says Prime Minister David Cameron signalled a change in the government's approach to tackling Islamist extremism in a speech he gave in Munich in February.

In it he said there needed to be a "lot less" of the "passive tolerance" of recent years.

Extremist groups, Mr Cameron said, must be stopped from reaching people in publicly-funded institutions, such as universities.

Last month, the All-Party parliamentary group on homeland security said it had "grave concerns" students were being radicalised in universities, but the body which represents vice-chancellors, Universities UK, denied the claims.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The government is currently reviewing the Prevent programme, which isn't working as well as it could.

"We need a strategy that is effective and properly focused. The findings will be published shortly."

Lecturers warn over cost of cuts

29 May 2011 Last updated at 22:38 GMT UCU has campaigned to retain Education Maintenance Allowances The UK could become "yesterday's country equipped with yesterday's skills" if education cuts continue, the UCU lecturers' union leader has warned.

Sally Hunt told delegates at the University and College Union's annual congress that "it is ignorance that is the expensive option, not education".

The funding cuts come as UK graduation rates are dropping below those of many international rivals, she said.

The government says higher tuition fees will bring a rise in university income.

The University and College Union has been strongly opposed to the government's decision to allow universities to raise undergraduate fees to between £6,000 and £9,000, as teaching grants are cut.

'Fundamental threat'

Ms Hunt, the union's general secretary, pointed to the scrapping of the Aim Higher programme, which helped disadvantaged students into university, cuts to English language lesson funding for immigrants, and the axing of the Education Maintenance Allowance.

The government has scrapped EMA grants of up to £30 a week for low-income 16 to 19-year-olds in full-time education, saying the programme was wasteful, and replaced it with a smaller bursaries fund.

The UCU leader said that the coalition government was a "fundamental threat to everything we stand for as educators".

The UCU leader pointed to rankings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries which show the UK's graduation rate dropping from the third highest in 2000 to the 15th in 2008, overtaken by countries such as Poland and Slovakia.

"When you shut the door on opportunity for our young people you don't just waste lives, you waste money," she said.

"When you weigh the cost of keeping kids on benefit versus giving them a chance in life it is ignorance that is the expensive option, not education," Ms Hunt added.

Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said the government agreed that "education is critical for social mobility and economic growth".

"That is why we are funding 250,000 more apprenticeships over this parliament, improving careers advice and transforming university finance," he said.

Industrial action

Mr Willetts said that, according to the government's estimates, universities should see a 10% rise in teaching income by 2014-15, as raised tuition fees replace funding from government.

"But, crucially, funding will follow the decisions of students so successful universities will thrive," he added.

On Saturday, delegates voted for a ballot on industrial action - targeting university exams and admissions - in a row over pensions.

They backed a motion calling for a ballot on "a major programme of sustained and disruptive industrial action".

The union says pensions changes will leave new staff up to £120,000 worse off.

University employers say the scheme alterations are needed as costs rise because people are living longer.

Brian Blessed bids to be Cambridge chancellor

3 June 2011 Last updated at 12:45 GMT Brian Blessed, Shakesperean actor and mountaineer, reached the summit of Everest in 2005 Actor Brian Blessed has announced he will stand for the chancellorship of Cambridge University.

He said he was "thrilled" after a student Facebook campaign gained him enough nominations to stand against supermarket heir Lord Sainsbury.

Local shopkeeper Abdul Arain is also running for the prestigious role, currently held by the Duke of Edinburgh, who is retiring.

Mr Arain said: "I'm standing for the whole Cambridge community".

The election for chancellor is now a race rather than a straightforward handover.

The university only has to nominate one official candidate and has already declared that to be Lord Sainsbury.

Store protest

Any other candidates must win 50 nominations from the university senate by 17 June or Lord Sainsbury automatically becomes chancellor.

Mr Blessed has secured his 50 nominations and has been confirmed as a candidate.

The senate is made up of anyone who has an MA or higher degree from Cambridge.

Abdul Arain believes he will have the 50 nominations he needs by 17 June

Seth Alexander Thevoz, who set up the Facebook campaign to get Mr Blessed nominated, said: "Cambridge can do much better for itself. The man, the myth, the legend that is the actor Brian Blessed would make an amazing chancellor.

"Picture him loudly reciting the Latin at graduation ceremonies and you have some idea of what a legend Brian would be."

After the group reached its target, Mr Blessed, a former Cambridge student and mountain climber, accepted the nomination.

He said: "For me, Cambridge has always been the centre of the earth, there is a brightness and light there that rivals that on Mount Everest. The whole setting is wonderful and enchants the soul."

His competition, Mr Arain, runs a grocery shop on Mill Road, Cambridge and is protesting at plans for a Sainsbury's to open on the same street.

On 3 June he had 40 nominations and was confident he would have the full 50 by 17 June to make the October election.

Mr Arain said: "Cambridge should be an institution that nurtures the community as well as world-renowned educational values."

Whoever becomes chancellor will get a role for life as constitutional head of the university, advising on difficult issues and conferring honorary degrees at an annual ceremony.

Record numbers of overseas students

10 March 2011 Last updated at 00:19 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent The number of international students around the world is continuing to rise sharply, with provisional figures from Unesco's Institute for Statistics revealing an annual increase of 12%.

The final figures for 2009, to be published in May, are expected to show the number of international students rising to 3.43 million from 2.96 million, according to the Unesco statistics.

There are many different measures of overseas students - but this global figure from Unesco shows a huge spike in numbers this decade, rising by more than 75% since 2000.

The United States is the biggest destination. According to the Institute of International Education, the latest figures show there are 691,000 students in the US, with an annual value to the economy estimated at around $20bn (£12.3bn).

But its dominance now depends on the ever-growing number of arrivals from China, overtaking India as the largest single group of overseas students. The number of Chinese students in the US rose by almost 30% in a single year. The third biggest contingent in the US comes from South Korea.

China has become the firecracker in this market. There are more than 440,000 Chinese students abroad - and there are plans to rapidly increase the number of overseas students coming to China's universities, with an ambitious target of 500,000 places.

To put this into a longer-term perspective, the entire overseas student population in China could once have travelled in a minibus. In the early 1950s it consisted of 20 east Europeans.

Chasing quality

Driving the demand among Chinese to study abroad is a shortage of places on high-quality degree courses at home and the pressure to have an overseas qualification when chasing jobs, says Rahul Choudaha, associate director of the New York-based World Education Services.

Sign of the times: The expanding Chinese economy is drawing overseas students to Shanghai

The Chinese university system has expanded in terms of quantity, says Dr Choudaha, but it is struggling to keep pace with the demand for quality.

The plan to bring more overseas students into China is part of the country's drive to internationalise its economy and become a "knowledge power", says Dr Choudaha.

It's also a reflection of how much the culture of the overseas student market has changed - with western universities no longer able to depend on their pivotal position.

It was once a trade as stately as steamships, vaguely colonial in how it managed to make a nice little earner seem rather philanthropic.

Now it's more like international air travel, with the trade routes of this multi-billion business wrapping themselves around the globe in every direction.

The current intake of overseas students in China also shows a different kind of map of influence. The only European country in its top 10 is Russia - with the most overseas students in China coming from South Korea, the US, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Overseas without the travel

It's also no longer necessarily about overseas students travelling from overseas.

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We don't consider their nationality, we just want the best”

End Quote Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook Massachusetts Institute of Technology Figures released by the British Council this week show that there are now more "overseas students" taking UK degrees in their own countries than there are overseas students coming to study in the UK.

The UK is the second biggest destination for overseas students.

But there are now 340,000 students taking UK university courses in their home countries, either through partnerships between UK and local universities or else through UK universities setting up branch campuses, such as Nottingham in Ningbo in China.

More than 160 branch campuses have been opened in more than 50 countries - mostly by US universities. There are also a multitude of partnerships and joint degrees as part of this academic cross-pollination.

According to the British Council, this type of "transnational" studying has increased by 70% in a decade.

The council's chief executive, Martin Davidson, says this is going to appeal to "students across the world who may not be able to afford to spend several years thousands of miles away from home".

Technology can only accelerate this process. Online degrees are making strides in the mainstream, with US firms such as Laureate teaming up with institutions such as Liverpool University to offer internet-based courses. Laureate has a network of university links in 24 countries.

Talent search

Another key to this growth in internationalisation is the competition for the most talented students and staff.

Major research institutions are like top football clubs, operating in in a kind of international zone, judged by international comparisons and competing to recruit the best individuals from around the world.

Students in Berlin: Universities have international catchment areas

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is widely-recognised as one of the best research universities in the world.

It might be physically based in Boston, but its cutting-edge postgraduate courses depend on recruiting the best students - and this means a global rather than a national catchment area.

About 40% of the students on graduate courses are from outside the US, says Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, director and associate dean of the International Students Office.

"We open up admissions to the whole world. We don't consider their nationality, we just want the best - and we get them," she says.

There are more than a hundred different nationalities represented in the graduate intake - with the biggest numbers coming from China, India and South Korea.

Cash cows

The scale of the increase in international student numbers in university is not without risks.

In the UK, the current level of anxiety over proposed student visa restrictions reveals how much universities have come to depend on the income from overseas students.

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No student wants to be an export earner and the sooner we learn this the better”

End Quote Steven Schwartz Macquarie University, Sydney Steven Schwartz is vice chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, having previously worked in universities in the UK and US.

In Australia he has seen how quickly an expanding overseas student market can evaporate.

Indian public opinion was outraged after a series of attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2009. Applications from Indian students slumped by 50% - and threatened an industry which had grown to become Australia's third biggest export.

He says the lesson from this rise and fall is that university systems should always remember that students are individuals rather than walking fee cheques.

"Studying with students from diverse backgrounds, domestic students learn about other cultures, cuisines and languages. They also learn about fairness and tolerance and teamwork and fair play. These lessons are just as important as any learned in class," says Prof Schwartz.

"However these lessons will be negated when we treat international students as simply income sources. No student wants to be an export earner and the sooner we learn this the better."