US dominance of Higher Education to be blown away.

Society Business and Career
1

I have just been reading up on this UCL-IC proposed merger, it would, to paraphrase the Economist (www.economist.com) creat a instituation with more academic clout then either Oxford or Cambridge.

All the surces available online say it would have a research budget of over £400million, thats more then Oxford/Cambridge/Harvard and almost anything else. Only Stanford (apparently) comes close. This would shake the academic world thru to its feet, and with one swoop bring the pinnacle of higher education away from the US Ivy League and firmly back into the UK. Nothing in the world would be able to compete with such a university, it would attract the top everyting from across the globe.

A decision on merger will be taken on December 19th-and if approved the detauils of it will be planned out for propsed union by 2004!

The aim is to compete with the US, with this they will dwarf the US institutions.

2

in terms of getting an international education yes. In terms of taking away from the prestige of MIT and Stanford or Princeton, CalTech in pure academic poweress and invention , no. Just consider the Internet age - if it was not created at MIT then it was either at Stanford of Berkeley or Princeton. Not much mention of UCL or IC. Of course the www was invented at cern so the Europeans do have something but then CERN is much more innovative then IC or UCL in my view.

3

I dont think you quite grasp how big and awesome this will be. It will outstrip Oxbridge in status too, and as such slap US Ivy League Unis across the ring. I mean Oxbridge is regarded higher then US institutions and this will whup Oxbrudge.

Also, the Net was a US military creation-APRAnet. :)

4

APRAnet done at Stanford/Berkley qualifies it as academic research!

Could you post the amount of research done in $ with the UCL-IC merger? Perhaps we can compare that the amounts spent over here.

Oxbridge is regarded higher by the upper class brits not by anyone else. They are both liberal artsy kinda schools and you can not compare the pure reseach in Physics thats done at Princeton and Caltech with research at Cambridge even though it was Netown's college. Yes there are some bright spots but they are only a handful.

5

Last I heard this is no longer going ahead

Universities abandon merger plan

The universities have world-class reputations

A planned merger between University College London and Imperial College has been cancelled.
The two prestigious central London institutions had proposed a merger to become a “global player” in the international higher education market.

Now the universities have decided their “best interests” would not be best served by a merger.

In a statement, the universities said: "Imperial College and UCL have now completed an intense period of deliberation since it was first announced that the two colleges were exploring the desirability and feasibility of merger between the two institutions.

"A number of areas for future collaboration have been identified and may well be pursued.

“However, the overall conclusion is that the best interests of the two institutions are not served by a formal merger,” the statement said.

Imperial College rector Sir Richard Sykes and UCL’s acting provost Sir Derek Roberts had urged their staff to back the proposal.

But academic staff had not welcomed plans for what had been called a “super-university”, which would have had 10,000 research staff and research students.

Ill-thought out

General secretary of the Association of University Teachers, Sally Hunt said: “We’re very glad that common sense has prevailed and that this ill-thought out merger has been called off.”

“Clearly, the concerns that we raised right at the start of this process - that, among other things, staff would be alienated if they didn’t feel properly consulted - have proved to be insurmountable,” she said.

The two colleges are among the most academically successful in the UK.

In last year’s research league tables, only Oxford and Cambridge had more top-graded departments than UCL.

And Imperial College, which has a worldwide reputation for science and technology, can claim 14 Nobel laureates, including Sir Alexander Fleming, for the discovery of penicillin.

In October, Imperial College caused controversy by setting out how it would introduce top-up tuition fees for students of up to £10,500 a year.

6

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by hmcq: *
Oxbridge is regarded higher by the upper class brits not by anyone else. They are both liberal artsy kinda schools and you can not compare the pure reseach in Physics thats done at Princeton and Caltech with research at Cambridge even though it was Netown's college. Yes there are some bright spots but they are only a handful.
[/QUOTE]

ummm incorrect on all counts.

7

Thats a shame on the merger, I mean the UK has some great Unis, those 2 plus a few more in London and around the place like Manchester and UMIST and so on, but that would have been the heavyweight champion of higher education.

8

[quote]
Oxbridge is regarded higher by the upper class brits not by anyone else. They are both liberal artsy kinda schools and you can not compare the pure reseach in Physics thats done at Princeton and Caltech with research at Cambridge even though it was Netown's college. Yes there are some bright spots but they are only a handful.
[/quote]

LOL!! .... incorrect as Fraudz said...

9

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ana: *

LOL!! .... incorrect as Fraudz said...
[/QUOTE]

Which bits?