17 March 2019

Although Arab universities have begun to allocate funds for scientific research and are showing an interest in global and regional rankings the quality of research is still quite modest. An agreement between scientific publisher and information analytics company Elsevier and the Association of Arab Universities (AARU), an organisation of 280 universities, will set up the Arab Journals Platform, a network of academic journals that will improve the visibility of scientific research in the Middle East and North Africa.

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10 March 2019

In recent years there has been a trend away from the evaluation of research towards the assessment of excellence in teaching and learning. This is in part an attempt to provide useful information to students and other stakeholders.  One example of this is the creation of the English Teaching Excellence Framework, now known as the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework. The framework awards grades of gold, silver and bronze based on responses to the United Kingdom National Student Survey (NSS) and data on retention, employment and further study from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the Individualised Learner Record, and Destination of Leavers from Higher Education.

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05 March 2019

Universities around the world have become increasingly concerned with internationalisation over the last few years. This is in part a consequence of the growth of global and regional rankings, some of which include international students, international faculty, inbound and outbound exchange students, or international research collaboration among their indicators. An article by Viggo Stacey in PIE News reports on a growing gap between the priority given to internationalisation in Western Europe and Western Asia, including Turkey.

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Inflexion Private Equity announced that it has acquired Times Higher Education (“THE”) from TPG Capital (“TPG”). THE, formerly part of Tes Global, has been carved out as an independent entity as part of the investment from Inflexion.

Simon Turner, Managing Partner, Inflexion announcing the acquisition of THE declared: “By carving the business out, we can firmly focus on building its core strengths, namely through enhancing its digital presence and continuing its global expansion, particularly in the US and Asia”.

Source:
www.inflexion.com

In recent years there has been growing interest in the ranking of universities by subject or programme. This trend may be more helpful for students and other stakeholders than general rankings of entire universities.The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) rankings of universities by subject has just been published. Altogether there are 44 subject rankings plus five broad subject area rankings. QS notes that although the USA is still leading at the very top it is steadily losing ground to Australia, China and Europe.

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26 February 2019

An article in WONK HE by Paul Greatrix presents an unusual ranking of places and subjects in the UK that are most likely to use the services of “essay mills”, companies that supply essays to university students who are unable or unwilling to write their own.

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