Where’s the best place to hide from a recession? In further education of course! Sit back for a couple more years in digs reading Proust and listening to Radiohead until it all blows over. Not any more: Our Universities could be in serious financial trouble if foreign students decide they can no longer afford to study in Britain. For example at City University, a fifth of their overall income is from overseas students. The boss of the British Council said the choice of courses for domestic students could become more limited as foreign students are given priority – already on some courses up to 80% of students are from overseas. And if those students can’t afford to come, those courses will simply not run. There is a genuine fear that some overseas students will not return after the Christmas break. Baggsy their room!

Tags: education and teaching, overseas students to UK universities, Unviersity funding

There’s a recession on and those companies and employers that don’t pull their socks up are going to lose their pants. Just so in the case of Liberata – the company behind student maintenance allowances, who have botched the delivery of those grants; thousands of students are still waiting for their payments, more than two months after the beginning of term, as a result of Liberata encountering technical difficulties in processing EMA applications (paid to about 600,000 teenagers from low-income families as an incentive to keep them from dropping out of education).  At one stage the backlog of applications was in excess of 200,000. Despite reducing this backlog to 12,000 the government (Learning and Skills Council) have found it “unacceptable” that young people had had their EMA payments delayed and awarded the contract to Capita. That cock-up has lost Liberata over £60m in revenues, but the BBC has claimed that Liberata knew a year ago that it would be unable to fulfil the contract. Don’t worry; as is often the way with companies who fail on government contracts, they bounce back to make a hash of something equally important months later!

Tags: Banking and Finance, graduate job opportunities at Capita, student loans and grants, Student money

St John’s College Cambridge has introduced a new limit on student alcohol intake. No surprise then that complaints about the Dean’s ideas have been posted thick and fast on a wall in Facebook. And who’s this joining the debate? One, Pedro Amigo – or Peter Friend to you and me, or PAL, the initials of St. John’s Dean, Peter Anthony Lineham. That’s right, suspicious students found the mysterious Pedro shares Lineham’s email address. The Dean wont confirm or deny he’s stalking the site, but did apparently call the main detractors of his alcohol cull into his office for a “meeting” last week. No doubt Pedro tipped him off. Two-facebook if you ask me.

Tags: Facebook jobs, University St John's Cambridge, Using IT

We saw this coming and behold, a new university scheme will allow employers to attract talent to their organisation based on skills rather than a generic degree classification. The launch of The Higher Education and Achievement Record (HEAR) means 18 UK universities will be able to list students’ marks in individual coursework assignments as well as work experience and study abroad experience, and offer this as a transcript to employers. Fresh back from the Brighton Uni placements fair, we can tell you that companies really value that work experience. And talking to students it’s a great way to decide what you really want to do, as well as getting your CV to the top of the pile. Videos will go live next week. Check it.

Tags: degree verses work experience, student placement experience, training and placements, University degree rating

Aberystwyth University has confirmed that it had £4 million tied up in the Icelandic banking collapse. The university is one of three Welsh higher education institutions with a combined £8.1 million exposed to the crisis – these included Glyndwr Uni, Britain’s newest. A spokeswoman for the University of Wales said it deposited a “small amount” for 12 months in February. Along with investments by councils and police authorities, £78 million of Welsh public money is stuck in frozen accounts. The Uni has come forward to reassure students that situation will not affect the operation of the university in any way. Student loan anyone?!

Tags: Aberystwyth University, Glyndwr Uni, Iceland banking collapse, Unversity of Wales