The ever-perceptive Simon Marginson posed an intriguing question in a recent speech to the Association of Southeast Asian Institutions of Higher Learning conference in Taiwan. It was - Will higher education become as commonplace as mobile phones? While he didn’t outright answer his own question, the...
Here’s a thing. In this digital age of tablets, handy mobile devices, laptops and other technological must-have accessories, guess what is one of the most popular places on any university campus anywhere in the world? It’s the university library. In the words of the UK’s Society...
Higher education commentators spend a lot of time opining about what universities should, could or ought to do in the relentless drive for change and improvement. This is all legitimate: higher education is our passion - we think it’s great, and we want it to...
Recently Thomson Reuters proclaimed that we are now living in the most innovative age in human history. Analysing global intellectual property data and tracking global scientific literature publications, TR found that overall levels of innovation had sped on at record pace, with global patent volume...
News from the UK of a proposal to allow new degree-granting start-up universities to compete against existing institutions had me thinking: what would you need to start a new university from scratch? Well, you would want a decent (or more likely indecent) amount of money; some...
Tucked away in the stories accompanying the release of the THE World Reputation Rankings 2016 is a thought-provoking comment from Paul Blackmore, professor of Higher Education at King’s College London’s Policy Institute. Reflecting on the strong performance of Asian universities in their continuing climb up the rankings,...
Brains and Bloomsbury seem to go together. The bustling central London suburb is home to the British Museum, the University of London, and several leading medical institutions. Back in the smog-filled day Charles Dickens roamed its streets and later the likes of Virginia Woolf, John...
That higher education is in the grip of profound forces reshaping its role and meaning is a truism. The university as a cloistered centre “is a physical reminder of times past” writes Tom P Ables, but its function is no longer the same: “Not only is...
What is a university for? It’s a hoary old question, one that pops up with persistent regularity - if not explicitly then by implication. There have been two fine examples of this in the space of a couple of weeks or so, the implied answers poles...
The ‘Aristotle of our time’ Robert McKee, a guiding guru for writers of all kinds everywhere, says that storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world. Have universities grasped this simple but paradoxically complex truth and used it to good effect...