Across the UK, people are preparing for street parties and tea parties; hanging up bunting and laying out red carpets; opening new buildings and projects, and generally coming together to celebrate the past six decades as well as looking ahead to the next.

Below are just a few examples of the many ways in which universities in the UK are getting involved.

At the University of Bristol, celebrations began with two special public talks earlier in May. The first of these, by Professor Jutta Weldes, was on the subject ‘“Dressing up and Queening it”: Queen Elizabeth II, dress and British public diplomacy’ – an exploration of that ever-popular subject, the Queen’s wardrobe.

The second lecture, ‘Sixty years a queen: The Diamond Jubilee in Historical Perspective’, was given by Professor Sir David Cannadine, and included a comparison of the 2012 celebrations with those to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee back in 1897.

The University of Huddersfield’s celebrations are centred on the number 60. The university is offering 60 Diamond Jubilee scholarships to UK students, and another 60 for students from the other 53 Commonwealth nations.

There will also be 60 prizes for the top 60 graduates this year, and 60 special events, including concerts and public lectures.

Finally, to ensure that the legacy of the Jubilee year continues, the university is establishing a Diamond Jubilee Professorial Chair, and a Diamond Jubilee Research Scholarship.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham came up with a unique tribute, when the School of Chemistry decided to donate a tiny diamond that was unsuited for use in its experiments.

The diamond was just millimetres in size, but nonetheless the team were determined to try and engrave a tiny portrait of Her Majesty onto it.

They teamed up with the Nottingham Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Centre, and thanks to some pretty high-tech equipment involving accelerated gallium ions, they succeeded in creating the microscopic piece of Jubilee art.

Many universities in the UK are also hosting events at which the Queen, or other members of the royal family, will be present.

On 25 June, some 4,000 guests, including Her Majesty, will gather for a garden party in the grounds of the University of Reading’s Henley Business School.The event will include a river pageant of more than 30 boats, one of them a traditional Viking ship manned by University of Reading students.

The University of Exeter, meanwhile, has already received a royal visit. On 2 May, the Queen visited the campus and officially opened the university’s new £48 million development, which includes a new Student Services Centre, and a host of new and improved learning and leisure facilities.

The Director of the Institute of Public  Policy Research and the MP for Orpington has made a case for the importance of foreign students at UK universities, which fell by 1 percent in terms of market share between 2000 and 2009. The argument for international students is based on the notion that 15 percent of students end of staying in the country and contribute to the economy as well as contribute to innovation. The doing away with dodgy colleges has paved a way for government policies to welcome foreign students who may become the next leaders of industry.

A new Rankings were produced by a the group of research intensive institutions Universitas 21 last week. The researchers analysed 48 countries using 20 indicators under the umbrella of four major issues: resources, output, connectivity, and environment. The top countries are the US, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Denmark, and Switzerland. The researchers say that although international ranking systems are plentiful, there is no quantitative rankings which takes account of  how a nation educates their students, and how varying countries with complicated systems support and develop academic excellence.

The partnership between Yale University and the National University of Singapore to create a liberal arts college in the Asian country hit headlines when it was first announced. Now that plans are underway, opposition to the scheme is being raised with Yale’s arts and science faculty asking questions regarding concerns over Singapore’s civil liberties record. In addition fresh discussion surrounding who has the rights to use Yale’s brand is causing a stir particularly as the joint venture will not yield a degree from the prestigious American university. Nevertheless plans for the partnership appears to be moving forward with applicants already applying for the 2017 semester and a new president being announced this summer.

But while some universities stick to the standard elements – intranet, email, searchable library catalogue – others are rather more innovative in their approach.

Mobile phone apps to make student life easier and safer.

Northeastern State University in the US recently announced the launch of the GuardianSentral smartphone app, for students at its three campuses.

The application, which can be downloaded free of charge by iPhone and Android users, is designed to help students feel safer around campus. If a student feels threatened, she or he can use the app to send a ‘danger’ alert to campus police, including details of their current location.

There are also ‘Check-in’ and ‘Follow me’ options.

The first allows students to set a time by which they should be at a certain location; if they don’t arrive within this time, campus police will be alerted. The second tracks students from one location to another, ensuring that they reach their destination safely.

While it might seem a bit strange being ‘followed’ by campus security services, the GPS tracking is only activated if a student turns the application on.

ETH-Zurich, in Switzerland, is also using mobile phone apps – but for information-sharing, rather than security.

The official ETH-Zurich App, recently relaunched in an updated version, allows staff and students to check the university events calendar, read the latest campus news, find room locations, and even see what’s on offer that day in the various campus restaurants.

Users can also access contact details for university staff members, including email, phone and office location.

Koni Osterwalder is head of the group which implements and evaluates the use of new technologies in teaching at ETH-Zurich. He says universities cannot ignore the fact that “ICT is transforming almost every aspect of our personal and professional lives.”

Lectures where everyone is part of the show

The Sauder School of Business, at the University of British Columbia, Canada, has recently undergone a large redevelopment project.

Amongst the new facilities are lecture theatres designed to put an end to the days of students seeing lectures as a time to catch up on sleep! There are large screens at the front of the room, connected to a live camera which zooms in on whoever is speaking at the time – whether it’s the lecturer, a guest speaker, or one of the students.

Each seat has a button, which students press to indicate that they want to ask a question or contribute to a discussion, and a microphone, to ensure everyone can make themselves heard.

The idea is to make the space, which may hold up to 260 students, feel smaller and more intimate – as well as holding students’ attention for longer.

Katriona MacDonald, associate dean of international relations and strategic planning, says faculty members are now “actively designing the curriculum around this technology.”

Another option now available to lecturers at the Sauder Business School – and in many other universities too – is the use of an electronic voting system.

This allows students to vote on a question, using handsets (or ‘clickers’) that transmit results wirelessly to a receiver. Results can then be transformed into a graph, and projected onto the screen for everyone to see.

Online course materials available on iTunes U

Many universities are now using online software to make course materials available free of charge, not just for their own students, but for anyone with internet access.

For example, La Trobe University in Australia uses iTunes U to upload talks and lectures given by faculty members at the university. These can then be downloaded and listened to by anyone who’s interested. Some are just single podcasts, others are part of a series on a subject.

Topics so far have included Australian environmental history, postcolonial literature for children, principles of physics, press and society, and the European Union in a new millennium.

Professor John Rosenberg, senior vice chancellor, says there are multiple benefits: making information available to a wider audience, giving prospective students a ‘taster’ of courses at the university, and encouraging staff to become more adept at using modern technology.

But the biggest advantage, Rosenberg believes, is the ‘enthusiasm’ generated among students and within the wider academic community. This response reinforces his belief that “it’s important for universities to remain accessible and relevant to an increasingly tech-savvy student population.”

Universities creating their own social media

Lots of universities are finding ways to use existing social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, but in Montreal, Canada, students have their very own specially designed online networking system.

Developed by a group of students and recent graduates, UniYu was launched in February 2012 with the aim of providing a ‘one-stop shop’ for students’ networking needs. This includes sharing class notes and course advice, but also passing on information about clubs and social activities, and generally keeping in touch with what’s happening on and around campus.

Having already launched in five Montreal universities, the UniYu team plan to continue expanding across a wider region, and also to develop more features. In future students may be able to use UniYu to sell and buy books, find apartments to rent or roommates to share them with, and post reviews of local clubs and attractions.

The team’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Darmon, says, “Universities need to help students make better decisions with respect to their tutors, classes and so forth. We think technology can help to achieve this, especially if it includes a social and networking dimension.”

But of course the real verdict on technology has to come from the users.

The Onassis Prize for Finance went to Professor Stephen Ross, from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Ross’ most famous work includes his ‘arbitrage pricing theory’ and the ‘theory of agency’. He also co-discovered ‘risk neutral pricing’ and the ‘binomial model’ for pricing derivatives (non-finance scholars might be advised to look these up). Ross commented that he was “humbled” to be given the award.

Harvard’s Professor Elhanan Helpman, best known for his ‘new trade’ and ‘new growth’ theories, was given the Onassis Prize for International Trade. He spoke about the growing importance of international trade, and hoped that recognition of this would lead to wider understanding of his field.

Finally, the Onassis Prize for Shipping was shared between Professors Ernst Frankel (MIT), Richard Goss (Cardiff University), and Arnljot Stromme Svendesn (the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration). All three of are in semi-retirement, and long been prominent in the field of shipping . Goss reflected that “I am naturally delighted at receiving the prize and glad to share it with my good friends and colleagues Stromme Svendsen and Ernst Frankel.”

Commenting on the winners, Professor Costas Grammenos, founder of Cass Business School’s International Centre for Shipping, Trade and Finance and one of the driving forces behind the creation of the awards said:
“The Onassis Prizes recognise the lifetime contribution of some of the world’s most highly respected academics in finance, international trade and shipping.  I warmly congratulate the winners whose distinguished achievements have profoundly influenced their disciplines and continue to have an impact on academic thinking and business conduct worldwide.”

The Onassis awards are handed out triennially (once every three years) by London’s Cass Business School and the Onassis Foundation, founded by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in memory of his son Alexander, who died in a plane crash in 1973. Winners are chosen by a panel of academics, which includes two Nobel laureates. It is hoped that one day the awards will one day achieve the same status as the Nobel Prize in Economics. Each prize is worth US$200,000.

Prestigious universities in the States are putting their weight behind free online courses. Harvard and MIT have announced a partnership called edX which will begin enrolment this fall. With 60 million dollars to commence the project, the universities will be offering five courses including classes in engineering and humanities. University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Stanford have also announced a partnership recently called Coursera, which will be offering free online courses. Both MIT and Stanford have already pioneered successful free online course offerings, with MITx enrolling 120,000 students and Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course signing up 160,00 students.

At a recent conference in Riyadh concerning ‘World-class teaching universities’, the general director for international affairs at the Saudi Ministry of Higher Education has highlighted a strategy to becoming a top teaching university. Salim Al Malik called for universities to evaluate teaching quality and to set up learning centres to train staff, as well as, to make teaching training a component of postgraduate studies. Universities, he said, are measured too heavily on research alone and that teaching should not be relegated in the pursuit of becoming a world-class institution.

Brazil has upheld sweeping affirmative action policies in higher education which allows a quota for enrolling students of African or indigenous descent. Now the country, which has more people of African descent than any other country outside Africa, is starting to tackle the economic and social divides that many are saying are linked to racial politics. Supporters of the bill say that they hope this policy will not only tackle social issues but help bridge the learning gap necessary for job creation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

The new QS World University Rankings by Subject will be released in four tranches, beginning with the social sciences. They will feature improvements to the methodology introduced last year in the first ever international rankings of individual subjects, as well as an extension into new academic areas. Universities will continue to be ranked by academic reputation, employer reputation and research citations, with weightings tailored to each subject.

Last year’s exercise highlighted areas of excellence in universities that may not compete at the top level across all subjects, as well as confirming the status of the leaders in the overall QS World University Rankings.

The first 26 subject rankings attracted huge interest in 2011. Although dominated by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the results allowed more than 550 universities to demonstrate their strength in particular fields. Among the new subjects to be ranked will be Education and Communication and Media Studies, both of which attract large numbers of international students.

After the publication of social science results will come further launches focusing on engineering and technology, the sciences and the arts and humanities.

Ben Sowter, who will be responsible for the rankings as head of research at QS, said: “”We knew there was a demand for better information on individual subjects, not just whole universities, and the very positive reaction to the first rankings confirmed this. There will be improvements, as well as more subjects, in the second round so they should be even more useful to prospective students.”

Paul Thurman, Professor of Statistics at Columbia University, New York, and a member of the advisory board for the QS World University Rankings, said the subject rankings could represent a “sea change” in the information used to choose universities. “Research shows students are likely to know what they want to study, and these rankings help students find the best places to do just that,” he said. “Long gone, or long going, perhaps, are the days when only a school’s umbrella ‘brand’ matters.”

More than 33,000 academics and almost 17,000 employers took part in last year’s surveys, and more are expected to express an opinion this year. The results will feed into separate rankings for almost 30 subjects, as well as contributing half of the scores in this autumn’s global rankings. few days remain for academics to take part in the world’s biggest survey of expert opinion on the top global universities. With employers also casting their votes, the first stage of work on the 2012 QS World University Rankings is well under way.

QS rankings are increasingly influential in policy-making, as well as helping to inform the decisions of countless international students. The World Bank cited them recently, for example, as a possible tool for assessing the value of investments in tertiary education in South-East Asia.

The Bank used the QS rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities in preference to those published by Times Higher Education for an exercise which judged the number of ranked universities in each country against their population. Finland and Sweden were the most successful nations on this criterion.

The QS rankings are also used increasingly by employers, who contributed their own views in record numbers in 2011. None of the other global rankings include this key element, in spite of its importance to students in their choice of university and course.

Fazalur Rahman, a specialist in leadership and talent development at the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company, shared the “wonderful information” contained in the 2011 QS rankings with other managers. “They are 100 per cent useful – a kind of one-stop shop for the information we need,” he said. “I have a really high opinion of them because it is good to know what academics and other employers think.”

Mr Rahman, who has already cast his vote this year, said his company used the rankings to choose overseas universities at which to sponsor researchers working in oil and gas exploration, as well as in the recruitment of graduates.  “It is important to make the right choice because we are looking forward to developing future leaders,” he added.

Academics have their own criteria for judging the top universities in their subject, and these are revealed in extra questions added to the selection of leading universities. Three quarters of those responding to this section of the latest survey said that a reputation for high-quality research was the most important sign of an excellent global university. The international profile of its faculty was the next most important factor, followed by a reputation for high-quality students.

Within individual subjects, the number of journal articles was the primary influence on those responding to the survey. Only in drama, dance and the performing arts were books seen as more important. Not surprisingly, performances also featured strongly in this group of subjects, while considerable importance was attached to patents in engineering and materials science.

More than half of those completing the academic survey in 2011 were professors or associate professors. About 1,500 responses came from vice-chancellors and presidents of universities, or their deputies. More than 55 million people viewed the results, making them the most-read global higher education rankings.

Ben Sowter, head of the QS Intelligence Unit, which produces the rankings, said: “Last year’s responses exceeded all expectations both in their quantity and quality. To have such a high proportion of senior academics among so many responses adds to the credibility of the results. So far, we have seen equal enthusiasm this year from both academics and employers.”

Physics and astronomy produced the biggest response by academics last year, followed by the biological sciences and business and management. Consulting and professional services produced the largest number of responses from employers, followed by manufacturing and engineering.

We encourage institutions to direct suitable employers to the QS Global Employer Survey sign-up facility to be sent an invitation to participate here: http://bit.ly/employerqs

Participate in the QS Global Academic Survey here: http://bit.ly/academicqs

Launched earlier this year, QS AIM (for Academic International Mobility) is intended to supplement today’s nationally-oriented academic job sites and publications, adding a new option with a completely international view.

Tony Martin, project director of AIM, says: “AIM is a global jobs portal for the academic world. We started it because we know that universities are more likely than ever before to mount a global search for faculty. They want a more international, and higher-quality, academic workforce. The nationally-oriented media in which most academic job advertising appears at the moment get about 90 per cent of their business from their home country.”

QS AIM helps universities find talent from around the world, aggregating job advertising on a global basis and supplementing it with content such as country guides and higher education news, geared to the needs of the actual or potential expatriate academic.

Martin says that AIM is a logical development for QS. “Although most of our work is with students rather than academics, we know that a fifth of the visitors to our topuniversities.com web site are employees of academic institutions. Several QS businesses are oriented towards universities rather than students, such as the QS Intelligence Unit, QS unisolution and QS Consulting.” He adds that these businesses mainly engage with university managers. “While there will be advertising for senior managers on QS AIM, it will also connect us directly to active academics.”

The QS AIM web site now has details of over 2000 jobs. They are mainly from top academic nations such as Australia, the UK and the US, as well as mainland Europe, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and China.

Martin says that the US is an especially interesting market because of its historically low number of international academics. “Many US universities are becoming more aware of how insular they are, and as their outlook broadens, they will want a more diverse faculty.”

●  QS AIM’s beta web site is at www.qsaim.com. Advertising there is free during the current launch period.

Seven overseas universities or colleges already have bases in Hong Kong. But none is on the scale of the proposed branch campus, which could accommodate 8,000 students and rival the island’s own highly successful institutions.

The award of the Queen’s Hill development will mark the latest stage in a transformation of Hong Kong’s education system, designed to produce global leaders.  Top-to-bottom reforms have seen a restructuring of the school and higher education curricula to encourage greater creativity and flexibility.

In higher education, the Hong Kong government has moved away from the British system that it inherited. Although officials deny that there is any one model, the new four-year undergraduate degrees will have more in common with American universities.

The switch has meant two school cohorts applying for a single year’s university places, with a resulting boom in applications to overseas universities. British universities alone have seen a 37 per cent increase in applications from Hong Kong.

The level of competition for places at Hong Kong’s five existing universities will begin to settle down next year, but demand for higher education will continue to outstrip supply. And, as a distinctive and prosperous setting on the doorstep of mainland China, Hong Kong is also an attractive destination for students from the rest of Asia and beyond.

Branch campuses – and particularly the Queen’s Hill site – are expected to play an important role in establishing Hong Kong as a regional education hub. At a briefing on the reforms ahead of the British Council’s Going Global conference in London, Kenneth Chen, the Under Secretary for Education, said: “We want an environment where institutions can set up easily in Hong Kong, so the land is being offered at a nominal premium.”

American and British universities are among those to have shown interest in the project, but formal applications will not be sought until later in the year. American universities are the most prolific originators of overseas branch campuses, with 78 already in existence.

A recent report by the Observatory on Borderless Education forecast substantial growth in the current total of 200 branch campuses over the next three years. Of 37 already at the planning stage, 13 were initiatives by American universities and colleges in locations that included China, Korea and Rwanda.