British universities need urgent reform - 1 views
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British universities are undergoing an identity crisis
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They no longer relate comfortably to schools, parents, students, would-be students, the examination system, the education marketplace, the British government – or each other.
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As we report today, as many as one in five universities is staging its own entrance exam because it no longer trusts the state's A-levels to distinguish between averagely bright and very bright pupils: teenagers from both these groups routinely arrive on their doorsteps with grades worthy of a Nobel prize winner.
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Clearly, they are here to stay – unless the Government summons up the nerve to reform education far more radically than it is already doing.
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Tuition fees reflect fast-changing circumstances that will force good universities to raise the academic as well as the financial bar in order to compete internationally. As they do so, they will increasingly question the arguments for remaining shackled to a British state that not only genuflects in front of the altar of egalitarianism (albeit a bit less piously than before) but also, as we are reminded again today, cannot even devise a proper set of exams for sixth-formers.
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Telegraph View: British universities no longer know exactly what they are and what they are for. - British universities are undergoing an identity crisis. They no longer know exactly what they are and what they are for, now that social engineering has stretched the definition of "university" to breaking point. They no longer relate comfortably to schools, parents, students, would-be students, the examination system, the education marketplace, the British government - or each other. Every week brings fresh evidence of the weakening of these bonds, even in the middle of the Christmas holidays. - As we report today, as many as one in five universities is staging its own entrance exam because it no longer trusts the state's A-levels to distinguish between averagely bright and very bright pupils: teenagers from both these groups routinely arrive on their doorsteps with grades worthy of a Nobel prize winner...