University dropout steady at 22%

An £800m drive to reduce the number of university dropouts has had virtually no effect, according to a report from a committee of MPs. The proportion of students who fail to complete their degree has remained at 22% for five years, it reveals.

Universities are getting larger and “can be impersonal”, and fail to provide individual tutors to support students through their degrees, the public accounts committee said.

Instead of improving support for students, some universities are recruiting more students so that they don’t end up out of pocket when those who drop out take their funding with them, it said.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the committee, said: “Five years on from our last report on student retention the percentage of students dropping out from their original universities has not budged from 22%. This is despite some £800m being paid to universities over the same period to help retain students most likely to withdraw from courses early.”

Poorer students, older students, disabled students and those with families - the “non-traditional” students the government is keen to attract - are more likely to drop out.

In 2005 St George’s hospital medical school, Oxford University, the Royal Veterinary College, Warwick and Bristol universities had below 3% drop out rates. And the Russell group of elite research-led universities had much better retention rates.

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Take a leaf out of Philip M Parker’s book

Philip M Parker is the world’s fastest book author, and given that he has been at it only for about five years and already has more than 85,000 books to his name, he is also probably the most prolific.

Parker is also the most wide-ranging of authors - the phrase “shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings” is not the half a per cent of it. Nor are the classic subjects foreign to him.

He has authored 188 books related to shoes, 10 about ships, 219 about wax, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements.

To begin somewhere, let’s note that Parker is the author of The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States, which is 677 pages long, sells for £250, and is described by the publisher as a “study [that] covers the latent demand outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holders across the states and cities of the United States”.

Philip M Parker titles include the following:

· The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Rotary Pumps with Designed Pressure of 100 psi or Less and Designed Capacity of 10 gpm or Less.

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Why I chose the University of Wherever

Students no longer care much which country they are studying in. As long as the course is excellent.

It was New York, Virginia, Oslo or Leicester for PhD student Ibrahim Umar. In the end, the 37-year-old from Nigeria decided on a university in Leicester.

But it wasn’t the UK brand that swung it. He had scrutinised the calibre of lecturers in each university and Leicester had come out top. “I didn’t make my choice on the lifestyle in the UK. I hadn’t considered that,” he says.

Today Education Guardian exclusively reveals the results of the largest ever study into why overseas students pick UK universities. The market research firm i-graduate quizzed 54,836 students from 221 countries studying in 71 UK universities late last year.

The findings show how typical Umar is: location is now a secondary consideration for overseas students deciding where to study. A university’s brand, reputation and quality of teaching come first.

“These students are not choosing between the UK or the US, they are choosing between Yale or Cambridge,” says Simon Bush, head of analysis and research at i-graduate.

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If you join the Royal Navy you can travel the world and even go to business school.

What is 318ft long, weighs 7,400 tonnes, and contains a nuclear reactor that could power 10,000 homes? HMS Astute is one of the Royal Navy’s new generation of “hunter-killer” attack submarines. Packed with the latest Spearfish torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, it can glide around the globe without once surfacing or refuelling.

Lieutenant-Commander Benjamin Stafford used to be a plant operator on board the navy’s underwater fleet. Now he works in a procurement and acquisitions role for the Astute class of submarines, which are assembled from more than 1m components. It’s one of the Ministry of Defence’s biggest projects - which is why, every six weeks, you’ll find Stafford in a classroom in Cranfield, Bedfordshire.

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City Banker, 34, sat exams for Student, 22

A City investment banker who held senior positions at Bank of America and Credit Suisse may face jail after posing as a university undergraduate in order to help a student cheat his way through his final-year economics exams.

Jerome Drean, 34, the former head of European equity derivatives trading at Credit Suisse, pretended to be Elnar Askerov, a 22-year-old Azerbaijani economics student at the University of York. Although there was no physical resemblance, Drean is believed to have sat eight exams over a period of 18 months, using a false identity card to pose as Askerov.

The two men pleaded guilty at York crown court yesterday to conspiring to defraud the University of York.

The fraud was discovered on the same day that a second imposter was found to be sitting an exam for another student on the same course. Qui Shi Zhang, 23, persuaded another Chinese undergraduate, Xin Zhang, 24, to sit the business finance paper on his behalf. Each man was sentenced to 100 hours of community service after pleading guilty to fraud charges.

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Colors may fade, the sun may not shine, the moon may not be bright, heartbeats may stop, lives may pass but our friendship, I’ll treasure ’till the day my heart stops.

When you’re down, I’ll be there to cheer you up. When you’re tired, I’ll be there to lift you up. I’ll be your friend no matter what!

Friends are like mangga… you’ll never know which is sweet and which is not. Well I’m lucky coz I was able to find the sweetest mangga in you!

If you want to be happy for a day, get a date. Happy for a week, get a lover. Happy till the end, keep me.

I don’t regret the things I have done and the things I didn’t do. For somewhere along the way I must have done something right coz I ended up with a friend like you.

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