Notable stories appearing on the HE Scotland Twitter feed in the last seven days included...
In policy and funding news:
- Lord Mandelson announced an additional 10,000 partially-funded places at English universities with the intention of addressing a significant increase in applications. Find out why the announcement received a relatively cool reception and what the news might mean for Scotland in HE Scotland's blog post on the topic.
- A report for the UK government looking at access to the professions included praise for the University of Edinburgh's Pathways to the Professions scheme. However, the findings of Unleashing Aspiration drew comment from the Russell Group, the NUS and UCU, much of it focused on the proposals for 'fee free' degrees for English students staying at home and studying at a local university.
- Glasgow Caledonian University found itself at the centre of a political row relating to comments made by the SNP's candidate for the Glasgow North-East Westminster by-election. A former Principal and Labour's higher education spokesperson, Claire Baker MSP, were both critical and the matter was raised in the Scottish Parliament.
- There was official news about the impact of the downturn on HEFCE's future funding for English institutions in the form of Wednesday's publication of a consultation on teaching funding efficiency savings and Thursday's news about revised grant allocations.
- Also this week, UHI put its draft Gaelic Language plan out to consultation, making it the first Scottish University to produce such a plan.
- Freshers were left wondering whether they might miss out on a tradition when, on Thursday, the Guardian announced that Universities may cancel freshers' week over swine flu.
- The UHI made a series of announcements about students of the year at various of its sites, with Tommy Hayward, Dr George Craig, Kerry McGeachy and Nigel "Kenny" Kenworthy all picking up awards.
- University of Aberdeen students had a notable triumph with their self-built car at Silverstone race track, picking up three awards and being placed highly in a global competition.
- The University of Abertay, Dundee and RSAMD both made announcements about student funding awards.
- The University of Glasgow made a significant splash in the media by announcing news of researchers' findings about a girl with near perfect vision, despite having been born with just half a brain.
- The University of Aberdeen's emeritus Professor, Hugh Pennington, was ubiquitous in commenting on the swine flu epidemic and, at the time of writing, had notched up some seventeen name checks on Twitter in just seven days.
- There was news of two significant funding awards for the University of Dundee, which picked up £2m for its role leading a research consortium looking into off-grid electricity and was awarded a further £1.7m as the leader of a study looking into the delivery of drugs to treat cancer.
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