News will come as a shock to staff, especially at Cranfield, but the institutions’ bosses say intention is growth

The announcement that King’s College London is to absorb Cranfield University came as a surprise but not a shock to England’s higher education leaders, who have been braced for sudden announcements about job cuts and course closures.

But for staff and students at both institutions the news will have come as a shock, particularly at Cranfield, the smaller, highly focused postgraduate technology and management college that has its own airport.

A 2023 supreme court decision banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions

The US Department of Justice on Thursday accused Yale University of illegally considering race in admissions to its medical school – the second institution to face discrimination allegations by the federal agency this month.

In a letter to a lawyer for Yale, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a justice department investigation found that Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to the medical school than white or Asian students, despite having lower grade-point averages and lower test scores.

Prof Abbas Rajabifard of the University of Melbourne says he was listed as a co-author of research with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator in recent peace talks, without his knowledge

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A University of Melbourne academic has denied collaborating on research with the speaker of Iran’s parliament – who has been leading Tehran’s peace negotiations with the US – saying he was named as an author on a journal article without his knowledge.

On Monday Guardian Australia revealed that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, had built extensive ties to Australia over the past decade, including links to a University of Melbourne engineering research centre.

Merged institution will become second largest mainstream university in UK with about 47,000 students

King’s College London has agreed to merge with Cranfield University, creating a new UK “super-university” that would rival many of its international competitors in size and research output.

The merger would result in King’s taking on another 5,000 mainly postgraduate students and becoming the second largest mainstream university in the UK, with about 47,000 students, overtaking the University of Manchester and behind only University College London.

More than 100 figures sign open letter criticising closure, just months after MA was launched

More than 100 academics, writers and activists from around the world have signed an open letter condemning plans to close an MA in Black studies and global justice at Birmingham City University (BCU), just months after it was first launched.

The move follows the controversial closure of BCU’s undergraduate course in Black studies in 2024, and has prompted warnings that Black studies are being erased from UK higher education.