By David Matthews. A new government-commissioned study says a degree will earn graduates an extra £252,000 over their lifetime for women and £168,000 for men.
It comes amid debate over the value of a degree following the rise in tuition fees in the last academic year. The estimate is substantially higher than the £100,000 graduate premium calculated in 2002 by the Department for Education, which has been repeatedly cited by universities and politicians since. The Impact of University Degrees on the Lifecycle of Earnings: Some Further Analysis, released today, argues that men with a degree earn 28 per cent more than those without one, while for women the differential is 53 per cent. More...

By Gary Thomas. Yearly improvements are an inevitable by-product of social progress, says Gary Thomas. August is a dry time for newspaper editors, but until last year’s unexpected fall in top A-level grades, they could at least rely on annual warnings of grade inflation and exams getting easier. When last summer brought the first fall in the proportion of pupils achieving the top grade for 21 years, The Daily Telegraph described this as “cause for celebration”.
Are year-on-year improvements unfeasible, or are they an inevitable consequence of a wider phenomenon? As Frank Spencer so memorably described it to Betty: “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
Frank was right, but his maxim is more than a self-help anodyne. Last year in the New South Wales school athletics championships, a 12-year-old boy, James Gallaugher, ran the 100m in 11.72 seconds. A century ago at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, this would have comfortably secured him the gold medal over the actual winner Thomas Burke (US, 12.0 seconds). If we could time travel, today’s boy – not yet shaving – would beat the 1896 Olympic champion. More...

By David Matthews. Students should not be turned into consumers, sector expert Jürgen Enders tells David Matthews. Since the beginning of the year, the UK’s pool of higher education experts, long derided as being too small to cover so many universities and students, has arguably taken a turn to the right.
Nick Hillman, special adviser to the universities and science minister David Willetts, was named the new head of the Higher Education Policy Institute at the beginning of August. He helped to devise the coalition’s £9,000 fee regime for undergraduates, but has insisted that he will “speak truth unto power” and “go wherever the evidence leads”. More...

By Jack Grove. More divorced mothers are seeking legal advice about whether ex-husbands can extend support payments for children at university, a law firm has said. Pannone, a family law firm with offices in London and Manchester, said its staff had seen a surge in enquiries about maintenance payments to help support children in higher education since tuition fees rose to £9,000 last year. 
Many women did not realise that they could apply for maintenance beyond the end of a child’s secondary education, said Pannone associate Naomi Rainey. More...

By Elizabeth Gibney. Work between the UK research councils, Indian government and business can be improved by fixing practical barriers to collaboration, a report says. Since 2008, Research Councils UK and the government of India have together invested over £100 million in joint research programmes. 
Overall the report finds that researchers are positive about their experiences of research collaboration with each other and with their non-academic partners. But the research, which draws on interviews with researchers and programme directors as well as publicly available data, finds that about half of the projects undertaken through the partnership had experienced serious issues with access to data or access to people. Examples included visa problems, change of personnel in key positions or delays in hiring postdoctoral researchers. More...

By Joanne Yatvin. Back when I was a child, an important rite on the first day of school each year was the handing out of textbooks.  By the time we had reached the middle grades we could expect to receive a math book, a reading book, a geography book, a history book, a spelling book, a science book, a language book, and maybe a health book, too.  Having all those mysterious tomes piled on our desks that first day was a thrilling experience, especially if some of them were brand new, fresh smelling, and colorful.  All the fifth-grade knowledge in the world was spread out right before our eyes and belonged to us for an entire year!
With a sense of pride and status we carried the whole load back and forth between home and school those first few days, making brown paper covers to protect them and showing them off to our approving parents. More...

By Nick Anderson. The Education Department is taking new steps to help parents obtain federal college loans if their applications are rejected because of minor problems in their credit history — an effort to address complaints about tighter lending standards that has hurt enrollment at historically black colleges and universities.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan disclosed the action in a letter Tuesday to Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. For months, advocates of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have pressed Duncan for help because a sharp reduction in lending to parents has had a significant impact on HBCUs, including Howard University in the District, Morgan State University in Maryland and Hampton University in Virginia. More...

By Jeff Bryant. I have this recurring nightmare – one that, I fear, is about to become reality for most of America’s school children. In my dream, I’m back in elementary school. It’s testing day and I’m struggling to remember my locker combination and get to class on time. My backpack implausibly opens and spills its contents into the hallway. Indifferent schoolmates rush by.
Finally I’m seated in class. The other students are already busily filling out their tests. An unfriendly proctor passes out the exam, and as I scan down the page, my stomach seizes into knots. I can’t answer a single question. The math problems are a confusion of numbers and symbols. The readings are worded with vocabulary totally foreign to me.
Oh, and did I mention I’m not wearing any pants?
Why do I fear my recurring nightmare – except the part about not wearing any pants – is becoming a reality for more of America’s school children? And why should anyone professing to care about the welfare of the nation’s school children care about this? More...

By Nick Anderson. The leaders of Morgan State, Bowie State, Howard and eight other historically black universities warned President Obama last month that new limits on federal lending to parents would produce a “devastating impact on student enrollment” in the coming school year.
The university leaders asked the president, in a letter dated July 30, to reverse a step the administration took in October 2011 to tighten underwriting standards for parent loans. Low-income parents shut out from federal financing, they said, would be unable to pay college bills, forcing many students to withdraw from school. More...