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By Tom Myatt. Defend the Irish University will combat "massive underfunding" and "commercialisation" in Irish universities. A new political movement has been launched by a group of academics at Dublin City University which seeks a number of sweeping reforms to third-level education in Ireland. Defend the Irish University, led by Professor Ronaldo Munck, is soon to launch a public petition to the Irish Government with a comprehensive ten-point agenda. The group’s formation is a reaction to what it calls “massive underfunding combined with commercialisation and managerialism” in Irish universities. More...

Universities should be spending more time on teaching, according to David Willetts. In a new report, the Universities Minister suggests that the system has become "lopsided" with institutions focusing more on research than on teaching students. He said that given the growth in the number of students it was "surprising" that the time devoted to teaching had fallen, and argued that the "pendulum has swung too far away".
Mr Willetts' report, for the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank, looks at the UK's higher education system in the 50 years since the Robbins Report was published. More...

By Will Coldwell. A 'lost generation' from recession-hit Europe flocks to Britain to seek work – and finds it's not always what they hoped it would be. Nothing tastes quite as good as a coffee brewed by an expert barista. However, increasingly the chances are that the person serving you will have a high level of expertise in something a bit more substantial than coffee. With students and graduates from recession-hit Europe moving to the UK in their droves in the hope of finding work, the person serving you that cappuccino could well have a PhD. Dubbed the "lost generation", it is not hard to come by the stories of the qualified and aspirational young people from countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece who are struggling to find employment in the UK. More...

By Kim Jacobson. A glass ceiling remains in place for female medical research scientists in Australia. Although approximately 50% of PhD students and postdoctoral scientists are female, males run the majority of research laboratories. Despite some reform over the past three decades, there is still an exodus of female scientists from academic research at the transitional stage between a postdoctoral researcher and laboratory head. More...