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By Nigel Vincent. Michael Booth took a few well-aimed shots at the myth of the Nordic Utopia this week. Like him, I too am married to a Dane and regularly spend time there, and I can testify to one thing that they definitely get right: their school language policy. One foreign language, English, is obligatory for all pupils. We used to have a similar principle here until the last government abandoned it in 2004. More...

By Matthew Taylor. Students with three years' residency say they are being unfairly targeted by rule changes aimed at stemming a flood of migrants. When the letter landed on Crina Petrariu's doormat at the home she shares with her husband and young son in Hull, she assumed there had been a mistake. The short, official note stated that the second-year chemistry student's financial support had been frozen – and that she now owed the government £3,500. More...

By Melissa Benn. Test-obsessed schools are producing women who are getting an A* for compliance but are unprepared for their lives ahead. More girls are applying to university this year; 62,000 more of them to be exact. To anyone who has followed the steady rise in girls' educational achievements over the past few decades, this should come as no surprise. While boys may be gaining ground in recent years (notching up more top A-level marks), overall girls now "outperform" boys from the early years through to postgraduate qualifications. More...

By Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin grew up in York, upped sticks to London and never moved back north. This week he swam against the tide of migration to the south-east, and went home. When I read the news this week about the migration of talented young people from "the regions" to London and the south-east, where four out of every five new private-sector jobs were created between 2010 and 2012, my first thought was: "That's scandalous." My second thought was: "That's exactly what I did."
I grew up in York. After university, I moved to London to study law, and I never moved back north. More...

By Anonymous academic. If universities continue to heed the call of corporatisation, the role of the academic – as we know it – will become extinct. As an early-career lecturer in a post-1992 university, I often feel like a rare bird in an ornate cage struggling to maintain its dignity in a discount superstore filled with pets. This bird knows it could have been a proud representative of a noble lineage and chirrups dolefully as it ruffles its plumes, but the song is drowned out by the bustling sale of cheap, plastic imitation bird-objects around it. More...