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Bonnie Greer pledges to champion entrepreneurs and tackle race and gender inequality. Matthew Reisz writes

Secretary general points to body’s valuable support for the developing world

Foreign students struggle to gain recognition for Oxford Brookes’ distance-learning qualification.

Premium route to highly trusted sponsor status will cost £8k a year. David Matthews reports

Christopher Higgins details academy’s cost burden to Booksellers Association conference

Obama’s State of the Union address draws line in sand, QAA conference hears

Scholars tired of ‘constant’ data requests. Frances Mechan Schmidt writes

Simon Nelson brings BBC experience to the launch of the UK’s first course platform. Chris Parr reports

A sideways look at the week’s big stories

Lisa Downing explains to Matthew Reisz how society’s unspoken prejudices are given voice in the discourse surrounding killers

Austerity a greater threat than Moocs and private providers, writes John Morgan

Campaigners at the University of Sussex plan to host a national demonstration against privatisation in higher education.

University Campus Suffolk is to begin the process of gaining its own degree-awarding powers, its board has confirmed.

George Osborne’s budget has revealed that the government appears to be scrapping plans to grant VAT exemption to for-profit higher education providers, a move that was aimed at exposing universities to greater competition.

Universities will not be asked to admit more students from deprived backgrounds in their new access agreements, the director of fair access has indicated.

The chief executive of the Higher Education Academy is to be the new head of the University of the West of Scotland.

A librarian at a University of Oxford college has reportedly lost her job after a group of 30 students filmed an internet dance video in the library.

In a further demonstration of the lure of the so-called golden triangle, pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca has announced plans to relocate its UK-based research and development activities from Cheshire to Cambridge.

The University of York has unveiled Belgian cognitive psychologist Koen Lamberts as its new vice-chancellor.

Five engineers who laid the foundations for the modern internet have won the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

By Ry Rivard, for

The graduate premium in starting salaries increased by a quarter between 2005 and 2010, according to new research.

The UK needs to boost its output of science, technology, engineering and maths graduates by almost 50 per cent to satisfy market demand, a thinktank has calculated.

The academic field of international relations ignores the 51�Թ� South and is limited by its reliance on the English language, a South African humanities scholar has argued.

The University of the West of England has opted not to close its politics and international relations department after a campaign by students and staff to save it.

Some of the highest-achieving A-level students could be unfairly denied a place at the most selective universities if such institutions insist on candidates holding a grade A for GCSE English language, according to a headteachers’ association.

The English higher education sector last year saw its first real-terms cut in income since records began almost 20 years ago, while institutional finances will take a further hit this year because of the fall in student numbers under higher fees.

Liverpool John Moores University has chosen a high-profile judge as its new chancellor – although the appointment may not win many plaudits in the national press.

Universities UK has been asked by David Willetts to undertake a review of part-time study and make urgent recommendations in response to a report which shows a “dramatic decline” in part-time students.

Accreditation change could leave US for-profit’s finances in ashes. John Morgan writes

Scholars in arts and humanities departments vulnerable to subsidy cuts are fighting back. John Marcus reports

State should fund the individual, not the provision, Sir Michael Barber argues

Higher education could cause party fresh problems for 2015

Nancy Hopkins identifies remaining obstacles to gender equality

Council unveils five-year strategy

‘Common principles’ plan aims to protect research from risk-averse committees. Paul Jump reports

Minister of education tells conference his country cannot progress without building foreign partnerships

David Matthews meets a Syrian doctoral student at a UK university who is struggling to secure her future

Chief executive Roly Keating tells Matthew Reisz he will help university libraries seek ‘the heart of the service’

‘Unpredictable outcomes’ of reform require ‘immediate attention

In the second of a series surveying research evidence about teaching and learning, Graham Gibbs concludes that the best learning is done in small classes involving personal interaction with teachers

Matthew Reisz visits an exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of a pioneering epidemiologist

THE podcast hears rallying cry for sector: play up and let students play the game

University vice-chancellor reveals the struggle to educate students who have been brutalised by civil war

For long-term prosperity, universities in war-torn countries must focus on rebuilding infrastructure, conference hears

Revised open-access guidance leaves unanswered questions

A university research manager suspended over his prior conviction for the bombing of the Israeli Embassy has been told he can return to work.

UK businesses are being failed by the government’s lack of a “coherent strategy to support the commercialisation of technological innovation in the UK”, MPs have said.

There is no case for further scientific investigation into the “manifestly nonsensical” mechanism by which homeopathy is supposed to work, the government’s outgoing chief scientific advisor has said.

The Prime Minister has rejected calls to withdraw overseas university students from the government’s target to reduce net migration, saying the move “would not make any difference to our student migration policy”.