Universities 'need more cash to keep up with world's best'

By Graeme Paton. British universities are lagging behind those in other countries because of a lack of investment in higher education, a major international study has found. The UK was ranked 10th in the world despite boasting some of the globe’s best research institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge, it emerged. According to researchers, it is outperformed by other nations such as the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands in an assessment of the overall effectiveness of the higher education system.
British universities were named among the best in the world on a pound-for-pound basis – measuring research output and the production of a skilled workforce needed to meet the needs of industry. But the study by Universitas 21, an international network of universities and colleges, found that the nation slipped dramatically when assessed by the amount of public and private investment in universities. Read more...