Professor Roger Brown, the former vice-chancellor of Southampton Solent University, is one of the few big thinkers about higher education. He says what he thinks and what he thinks does not chime with prevailing orthodoxy, certainly when it comes to university funding. But his latest thoughts on maintaining standards are worth examining, partly because Brown used to run the now-defunct Higher Education Quality Council and partly because he really knows what goes on in a...
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In May this year, Oxford appealed to graduates and supporters for £1.25bn. The graduates are being targeted partly for their money, of course – although only a tiny number can afford to give large amounts – but also for their support. The aim is to raise the number of Oxford alumni who make donations to their alma mater towards levels in the USA, where graduates give billions of dollars to their universities.

Most clouds have silver linings, and the present atmosphere of gloom over the economy is no exception. Among the beneficiaries of the growing uncertainty in the job market are recruiters in the public sector, where salary potential might not make applicants salivate, but where job security suddenly does.

When Paul Burrows suffered from hearing loss back in 1994, he lost the ability to understand consonants, which makes speech very hard to follow. "If you take a sentence like 'the cat sat on the mat' and take all the consonants out, that's what I hear," he explains. Later, Burrows was diagnosed with ME and fibromyalgia, making it even more difficult to concentrate on what people are saying. It was at this point that Burrows, who is a social worker, was told by a nurse that he'd have to give...
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The last thing Amanda Featherstone expected to do in her role as a practice nurse in a GP's surgery was to study for a Masters degree. But last year, she completed an MSc in strategic leadership and expert practice (for nurse practitioners) that has enabled her to do many of the things GPs traditionally did.

After a long day in a busy classroom, with an evening of additional administration and lesson-planning waiting for them at home, it may be surprising to find teachers signing up for an extra hour or more at school. But this is exactly what's happening at Dunfermline High School in Fife, where three or four evenings a term teachers voluntarily attend twilight sessions to learn how to improve their classroom skills.

Lawyers like to work hard and play hard and when it comes to professional development, they have found a clever way to combine the two. The king of legal CPD events takes place next February on the slopes of Kitzbühel, the picturesque ski village in Austria, when immigration specialists from around the world will gather for a training "retreat".

Jake White, who guided South Africa to a second world title in France a little over a year ago, is not the first coach from the southern hemisphere to view the very English disease of Rampant Ciprianitis with a degree of suspicion – the successful Australian strategist Eddie Jones beat him to it by a good few weeks – but his words yesterday struck a chord all the same. "I read more about Danny Cipriani in the West End than I do about him on the rugby field," White remarked,...
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Portsmouth insist their dream of moving to a new waterfront stadium by 2011 is still alive despite new plans for the project looking certain to face a full public inquiry.

The Australian captain, Darren Lockyer, has joined Brent Tate and Paul Gallen as a doubt for Saturday's World Cup final.