EU Needs To Fiddle Its University Rankings

EU to test new university ranking in 2010

The European Union is developing a new worldwide ranking system of universities to rival currently established league tables in a bid to improve the ranking of European universities and improve Europe's economic power.

National league tables have been common since the 1990s but as higher education has increasingly become globalised with many students opting to take part of their studies abroad, the focus has shifted to worldwide university rankings.

This means the rankings are increasingly receiving more attention for different specific purposes: Students use them to short-list their choice of university; public and private institutions use them to decide on funding allocations; universities use them to promote themselves; while some politicians use them as a measure of national economic achievements or aspirations.

Europe's around 4,000 higher education institutions have over 19 million students and 1.5 million staff. However, European universities have time and again failed to make it big in the current world university rankings.

In other words, not enough of the EU's universities are making the grade, so they'll have to devise a way of pretending they are. A bit like the UK's exam system.

Brown Shafts Universities

Another great idea of Brown's - ram universities into a monster department for business, run by Mandelson. The word education rarely appears in the government's blatherings these days...

British Nationalisation Refinery Schools EU Meltdown

Such is the state of meltdown in British society that the government is now intending to nationalise failing private schools.

Students have been sold a lie, according to Decca Aitkenhead. Not all universities are the same: quite.

Also in the Guardian: acknowledgement that EU regulations are at the bottom of the trouble at the Lindsey oil refinery and other places (although you have to go to the inside pages to get that).

The BBC main news last night again featured the incredibly important story about an American woman giving birth to eight children. I'm torn between which thing pisses me off the most: the fact that they give primetime coverage to this non-story or that Fiona Bruce insists on saying OCT-tu-plets instead of oct-TOO-plets. and while I'm at it, why doesn't someone at the Beeb tell Huw Edwards that 'programme' is not pronounced 'progrum'?

There's a campaign afoot to get people to cc their emails to Jacqui Smith in protest at the inplementation of the data retention bill: Telegraph. I'm not sure how well this will work given that the date for the campaign has been made public (15th June) thereby giving the Home Office full warning. However, since this government is colossally incompetent, there's no knowing what they'll do.

It needs to said again that the government has no choice but to implement this bad piece of legislation because it is an EU directive (2006/54/EC).