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By Athene Donald. Saturday is International Women’s Day. It’s a good time to consider what academic success means to women. The University of Cambridge is attempting, through a series of interviews, to find out. Every year International Women’s Day provides a good occasion to reflect on women’s lot, past and present. A moment, perhaps, to consider those spectacularly successful women who have won the Nobel Prize. In the last decade across the three science prizes that amounts to a grand total of five: Ada Yonath (2009 Chemistry Prize), Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider (two of the three who shared the 2009 Physiology or Medicine prize), Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (who won the same prize in 2008), and Linda Buck (2004 Physiology or Medicine prize). Five women out of a total of seventy prizes awarded, or around 7%, a value below even the paltry percentage of women in tenured science faculty (typically 15-35% depending on discipline and country). More...

By Alan Travis. Home Office minister James Brokenshire signals fresh drive to arrest latest unexpected rise in net migration. More than 100 universities, further and higher education colleges, and independent schools face losing their right to sponsor overseas students under a fresh drive by Tory ministers to arrest the latest unexpected rise in net migration to Britain. More...

By Ami Sedghi. Harvard has once again topped the Times Higher Education’s reputation ranking of worldwide universities, with US institutions taking almost half of all the places on the top 100 list. Get the full data.
Harvard university has retained its number one spot on the Times Higher Education’s world reputation ranking of universities, with US institutions taking eight of the top 10 positions. More...

By Steve Joy. Plenty of thinking ahead and clearly structured answers will help take the fear out of interviews. Steve Joy offers advice on 10 tough questions. This post is a companion to my last piece about preparing for an academic interview. I've trawled the archives to pick out common yet tricky questions, and I offer some ideas for how to handle them. More...

By Australian Associated Press. Government budget cuts to universities blamed for Australia dropping from third to equal fourth place on the prestige index.
Australian universities have taken a hit in the latest survey of global brand awareness, possibly due to last year’s federal budget cuts. As a country, Australia has slipped from third to equal fourth on the prestige index. It has five institutions in the 2014 Times Higher Education reputation rankings released on Thursday, down from six in 2013, with Monash University slipping out of the top 100. More...

By Richard Adams. Times Higher Education gives the capital six universities in the world's top 100 – but UK is second by a long way to US. London has held its position as the world's top city for universities in the latest Times Higher Education world reputation rankings, although elsewhere British universities slipped down the global table. Both Cambridge and Oxford dropped a place in the top 10, to fourth and fifth respectively, supplanted by Stanford University in third, while Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stayed in first and second place respectively. More...

By Katie Morley. Money spent repaying student loans could produce a house deposit or pension pot, writes Katie Morley, who argues many degrees are poor value for her generation. It's no surprise a growing number of parents are worried their kids' degrees were an expensive mistake. More...

By Mel Rohse and Dean D'Souza. From seeking careers advice to winning a research grant, Mel and Dean question what it takes to secure a job in academia.
Mel Rohse, PhD in peace studies
I recently had an interesting conversation with a lecturer at the University of Birmingham. As I was telling her about the difficulties I had encountered in my job hunt so far, she offered some thoughts from her own experience. She suggested that, with the REF (Research Excellence Framework) just over, departments may start to look for younger academics to invest in, rather than focusing mainly on recruiting chairs, readers and professors. More...

By Peter Scott. Step 1 of the government's plan was George Osborne removing the cap on student numbers. Step 2 will remove 'red tape'. And step 3? An end to the £9,000 cap on fees, says Peter Scott. There has been a lot of hype, and sheer nonsense, written about George Osborne's sudden and unexpected announcement in his autumn statement that the overall cap on student numbers will be scrapped from next year. Some see it as a prelude to lifting the other, more important, cap: the one on the maximum fee that universities are allowed to charge – currently £9,000. More...

By David Bogle. Over half of PhD graduates now go into jobs outside academia. David Bogle says huge improvements in the training of doctoral graduates deserve more attention from employers. Not so long ago I heard a recruiter from a major financial institution bemoan the lack of creativity and research skills of graduates, but add in the same breath that they didn't recruit doctoral graduates. Clearly she wasn't aware of the quiet revolution taking place in doctoral education in the UK and, increasingly, across Europe. The transformation in the world of doctoral training is set out in a new report from the League of European Research Universities (LERU), whose 21 members produce over 12% of Europe's doctoral graduates. Our study, Good practice elements in doctoral training, sets out how universities are training creative, critical, autonomous, intellectual risk-takers in ways that go well beyond preparing them for a life in academia. More...