News Shorts

QMU backs out of Libya deal

Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University is one of five British universities who have pulled out of a £4 million pound deal financed by Gaddafi’s regime.

The University was part of a deal to train 300 Libyan health workers a year, alongside Manchester Metropolitan, Teeside, Liverpool John Moores and Glamorgan University.

The deal was brokered by Training Gateway, a company set up to promote the interests of British institutions abroad, and academics from the universities travelled to Libya last summer to evaluate Healthcare training. All five universities have now backed out.

The news follows revelations that 110 British universities received money from the Libyan government to educate students and comes just days after Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, resigned for accepting money from the Libyan dictator.

Gordon Brown to give Edinburgh University lecture

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is due to give a sell-out lecture on economics at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied before going into politics.

In his lecture entitled 'The Future of Jobs and Justice', Mr Brown will argue that there is an alternative to the prospect of low growth and high unemployment.

The talk is part of the prestigious Gifford Lectureships, which have been running for over 100 years and are held at the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen. Former lecturers include Iris Murdoch, Karl Barth and Richard Swinburne.

Mr Brown was admitted to the University of Edinburgh to study history at the age of just 16 and graduated with a first class degree. He also completed his doctorate at the university.

The lecture will be held at McEwan Hall on 19 April. Tickets for the event, which were available to the public, sold out quickly.

UoE performs poorly in reputation league table

The University of Edinburgh is poorly perceived compared with its actual performance, research by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) has revealed.

THES produced a ‘reputation league table’ based on how world universities are regarded by a panel of international experts.

Although Edinburgh was ranked at number 45, the sixth best in the UK, the position is 23 places lower than in the latest QS World Rankings, based on university performance.

The ranking comes despite the university’s continued efforts to improve its international reputation, led by the Edinburgh Global team.

THES claims that, despite being subjective, reputation has genuine economic value for universities.

American universities dominate the top 10 positions, with Harvard and MIT in first and second place, even though the University of Cambridge supersedes them in the QS rankings.