By Daniel Boffey. Student takes St Hugh's to court after after being rejected for not having access to £21,000 for tuition fees and living costs. An Oxford college is being sued for discriminating against poorer students applying to study for postgraduate courses. St Hugh's, which was founded in 1886, is being taken to court for choosing applicants not just on academic merit, but also on their ability to prove they can pay tens of thousands of pounds for tuition fees and living expenses.
It is claimed that, along with other Oxford colleges, St Hugh's is "selecting by wealth" in asking students with a conditional place at the university to demonstrate that they hold funds to cover tuition fees, plus at least £12,900 a year for living costs. The university refuses to take into account projected earnings from students who plan to carry out paid work during their course and has only one means-tested scholarship available. Read more...

By Rebecca Ratcliffe. Some institutions have reported big drop in enrolments while others have expanded, according to Ucas statistics. The introduction of higher fees last autumn caused "wild and dangerous swings" in enrolments at UK universities, statistics have revealed.
The number of students starting degree courses fell 12% when fees of up to £9,000 were introduced last year, but figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) show that some institutions' cohorts expanded last October as they took advantage of a new policy allowing them to take unlimited numbers of students achieving at least AAB grades at A-level. Read more...

By Jake New. The author and historian Taylor Branch spent nearly 25 years exploring and writing about the civil-rights era, and the result was a popular trilogy of books, America in the King Years, one of which won a Pulitzer Prize. This semester Mr. Branch will share his knowledge of the period by teaching a course at the University of Baltimore and opening it up to outsiders on the Web as a massive open online course, or MOOC.
The course, which starts on January 23, is built around his new book, The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, and will include face-to-face instruction with 20 University of Baltimore students, along with up to 100 auditors who will tune in online at no charge. Read more...

By Katherine Mangan. Cornell University’s online spinoff is moving into MOOCs, with a free marketing course in its hospitality program starting on Tuesday. But the program will be designed to steer students toward a follow-up course for $1,200 to get a professional certificate.
The free online course, “Marketing the Hospitality Brand Through New Media: Social, Mobile, and Search,” is being offered by eCornell. It’s geared toward people working in sales, marketing, and financial positions in the hospitality industry, and is being taught by Robert J. Kwortnik  and William Carroll, faculty members at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. The school has been offering online courses through eCornell since 2002, but this is the first one that is being pitched as a massive open online course, or MOOC. Cornell officials hope the class will attract thousands of students. Read more...

By Goldie Blumenstyk. One more sign that colleges and companies see the financial possibilities of the international-student market: A British company that helps to bring students from China and other countries to campuses in the United States and other English-speaking nations has announced an investment of more than $100-million from a private-equity firm.
The seven-year-old company, INTO University Partnerships, is known for the “pathways” programs it runs at Oregon State University and 15 other colleges and universities. INTO will distribute some of the investment, from Leeds Equity Partners, to its private shareholders and use the rest to help expand its business. Read more...

By Don Troop. Across-the-board pressure on all of the revenue sources that support higher education has prompted Moody’s Investors Service to issue a negative short-term outlook for the entire sector in a report issued on Wednesday.
“It basically means that there’s nowhere to hide, even for diversified market leaders, the top-tier universities,” said Eva Bogaty, the credit-rating agency’s assistant vice president and analyst who wrote the report. For the past two years, research universities have escaped criticism from Moody’s because of their diverse sources of revenue. However, state-government appropriations, investment earnings, gifts, research grants, and patient-care reimbursements are all facing economic pressure, the report says. Read more...

By Ellen Hazelkorn. How can universities demonstrate the benefit that arts and humanities research provides to society? It’s a perennial question and one that has become more urgent in Europe in recent years. I belong to a European consortium, supported by the Humanities in the European Research Area, that is investigating ways to better understand, capture, and measure the impact of the arts and humanities on society.
The arts and humanities have traditionally explained themselves in terms of intrinsic value; this has arguably been so since academe’s earliest days. While universities may differ in the emphasis they place on different disciplines, the belief that society benefits from the pursuit of knowledge and the scholarship generated by universities remains at the heart of the arts and humanities. This helps explain the strong endorsement of the liberal arts in the United States as the bedrock of undergraduate education. However, that certainty of value is now being challenged. Read more...

The number of Chinese students at American universities continues to grow, but those students often have trouble adjusting to the American classroom. I should know. As one of almost 200,000 students from China that are now pouring into campuses across the country, I have seen the difficulties firsthand. In a 2011 article, “The China Conundrum,” The Chronicle showed that many Chinese students speak poor English and participate little in class, in part because of the language deficiency. I agree it’s a problem. Read More...

Critère de sélection, de promotion ou de mobilité dans beaucoup d'entreprises, l'anglais n'est pourtant pas pratiqué couramment par la plupart des salariés français. Selon le dernier indice EF sur le niveau de compétences en anglais des adultes dans le monde, la France se situe au 23e rang mondial. Des résultats quelque peu inquiétants lorsque l'on sait que 50% des salariés ont déjà été confrontés, dans le cadre professionnel, à une situation en anglais où ils se sont retrouvés en difficulté (Baromètre Wall Street Institute/JobInTree).
A l'heure actuelle, les Français qui maîtrisent le mieux l'anglais ont entre 25 et 35 ans, car ils ont bénéficié d'un enseignement scolaire plus adapté et de l'émergence des formations post Bac à vocation internationale type Bachelor ou MBA... Pourtant, globalement, les actifs n'ont plus vraiment d'excuse, si ce n'est cette inhibition maladive à parler anglais en public, ils peuvent aujourd'hui bénéficier d'un large éventail de formations, même avec un emploi du temps chargé. Explications avec Christophe Libilbehety, Directeur commercial du magazine Vocable. Suite de l'article...

Une faute d'orthographe oubliée, un point d'exclamation mal interprété ou une formule de politesse hasardeuse et c'est le drame. Devenu un outil de travail à part entière, l'e-mail peut en effet générer "de l'incompréhension, des difficultés d'interprétation et des conflits", selon une note de l'Observatoire de la responsabilité sociétale des entreprises. Quelles sont alors les règles à respecter pour ne pas commettre d'impairs? Quelles formules de politesse utiliser pour ne pas passer pour un rustre? Aline Nishimata, auteure de "Savoir rédiger vos e-mails professionnels", livre des conseils pour éviter que sa correspondance finisse dans le dossier "Boulets" d'un collègue...
Quels sont les principaux points à soigner pour bien rédiger un mail?
La première chose, c'est l'objet du mail. Il est nécessaire d'y indiquer le contenu de votre message, ne serait-ce que pour être certain d'être lu. Pour ne pas froisser son interlocuteur, commencer par un "Cher Monsieur X" ou "Chère Madame X" est préférable à un simple "Bonjour" ou même seulement "Cher Monsieur" ou "Chère Madame". Accoler le nom de famille est en effet très important. Concernant le contenu, il faut respecter la règle journalistique des 5 W: Who? What? When? Where? Why (Qui? Quoi? Quand? Où? Pourquoi?). Suite de l'article...