Blogs

As graduation season in the US comes to an end for another year, it’s time to look back on the achievements and successes of the graduating class. And of course to look at the amazing graduation caps that students have designed to wear at their graduation ceremony. 

It has become a key tradition in many US universities for students to put their own personal touches to their graduation caps, the more elaborate the better. Some universities will even hold competitions to find the best ones so it’s always important to bring your A game. 

US president Donald Trump flew into London this week, adding to his ever-burgeoning carbon footprint. If you remember, he elected to take the world’s biggest polluter out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017.

In the US, it is tradition for actors, musicians, authors, politicians and successful business people to deliver a rousing, inspirational speech to set university graduates on the path to greatness.

This year was no different, with Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Garner, Pierce Brosnan, Pharrell Williams, Viola Davis and Hillary Clinton delivering some words of wisdom to college graduates as they prepare to step out into the world.

On the Times Higher Education Student Twitter feed (@THEUniAdvice), we sometimes ask students to look after the account for a week to share their university experiences. 

It’s been a long time coming but the Augar Review, a major review of education in the UK, has finally been released.

Many of the key recommendations look at ways of reducing student debt and eliminating the perception that university is purely for students from higher-income families.

My name is Romain and I was born and raised in Bordeaux, France. From an early age, I travelled quite a lot with my parents, and even though I was a only a kid, it made me realise that there was more than one way to think, eat, dress, and live. This made me curious to experience different cultures and different ways of life.

With this mindset, I took every chance I was given to go abroad during my bachelor’s and master’s studies: I spent four months in Sweden, then did a gap year in the US.

After years of abuse and neglect, at the age of 16 I left my parental home. Because of this, I thought I had lost any chances of ever attending university and making something of myself.

I was told by my social worker at the time that I was more likely to see the inside of a prison than a university, given my family situation. This could have broken all my motivation to work hard in school; however, it just fuelled my desire to be successful and prove these people wrong. 

In a shock result, the Liberal-National Coalition has triumphed in the 2019 Australian elections. Early polls were predicting that the Labour party would pip the Coalition government to the post, but more voters ticked the Liberal-National box instead.

So what does this mean for students? What exactly have the Coalition government pledged to do for higher education over their tenure? Well not a lot actually.

They have pledged a few different funding pots to boost certain aspects of the higher education sector. 

When I decided to do my PhD abroad in Hungary I had a clear idea in mind about my research plan. I started publishing papers even before getting into doctoral school, laying the foundations for my research topic. I published papers in well-indexed journals, exceeding the requirements of our doctoral school in the first four semesters of my PhD – after all, they say hard work pays off.

But sometimes too much hard work can be damaging. Somewhere in this journey, I lost myself in my research.

Having spent four years volunteering at a food bank in my home town of Birmingham, I was alarmed at the rapidly growing need for them.

What was once a small team, with a few shelves of baked beans and long-life milk, became a team of 20 to 30 volunteers hardly able to accommodate the increasing numbers of those in need.