• just over 2.5 million people are enroled in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
• slightly more students are doing postgraduate courses (up 2% since 2009/10), with slightly fewer doing undergraduate ones
• UK domiciled students account for 83% of all enrolments
• there is some considerable volatility in subject areas: for undergraduates enrolments in agriculture and related subjects increased 11% between 2009/10, whereas for architecture, building and planning, they decreased 6%; for postgraduates the greatest increase was in mathematical sciences (8%), whereas computer science numbers declined 6%.
• 64% of students gained an upper second or first class degree; more women than men achieved such degrees (65% of full-time students received such degrees; 51% of part-time students) (see Table 6 of HESA statistics).

One of the most striking of these findings is the continual grade inflation that is taking place in higher education.  In  2006/7 only 60% of all students gained upper second or first class degrees.  Going back in time, in 2000/01 only 54% of full-time students gained such degrees, and in 1994/95 it was 49% (HESA statistics).  Such inflation is hardly surprising, given that institutions are increasingly being judged externally by this measure.  I doubt that it is improvements in the quality of teaching that have led to such results.

Typical measures that universities use to inflate such results operate both at the institutional level through the mechanisms that are used to turn marks into overall grades, but also in the ways through which marks for courses are derived.  Institutionally, the following are typical mechanisms that have been used:

• introducing systems that ignore the worst marks achieved
• weighting the overall portfolio of marks in ways that lead to higher overall grades
• introducing mechanistic processes for candidates just below a threshold that automatically elevate them to the higher grade
• reducing the amount of unseen terminal examinations, and increasing the amount of easier types of assessment at which students perform better

At the more individual level, academics are also judged by the quality of results obtained by students doing their courses, and so it is quite common to find academics who:

• give strong hints at the subject matter that will be coming up in unseen exams
• give substantial amounts of help to students on assignments, such as dissertations, that are meant to be independent
• decide to be that little bit more generous at the margins, choosing to emphasise the stronger points over the weaker ones
• restructure their courses so that they contain elements that students find it easier to do well in

It could be argued that each of these is desirable, and that we should indeed be rewarding our good students for the efforts that they put in.  The fundamental point to be noted, though, is that getting a ‘good’ degree in 2011 means something very different from getting an upper second or first even a decade ago.

• some 35% of the world’s population use the Internet – which means that 65% still do not!
• although 45% of Internet users are under 25, 75% of the world’s under-25s still do not use the Internet.
• there are twice as many mobile-broadband as there are fixed-broadband subscribers across the world

It is not just connectivity, though, that matters.  The available bandwidth and speed of connectivity are also crucial.  The following ITU graph (click on image for larger version) thus illustrates the enormous contrasts that still exist in this respect:

Whereas more than 95% of fixed broadband connections in South Korea have advertised speeds of ≥ 10 Mbit/s, some 98% of connections in Ghana, Venezuela and Mongolia have speeds of ≤ 2 Mbit/s.

Of equal concern is the observation that the least developed countries are being left further and further behind in the race for digital connectivity.  In a striking report on the role of ICTs in the “least developed countries”, the ITU  shows this particularly graphically in the chart below (click on image for larger version), which illustrates the percentages of people who are Internet users:

This shows, for example, that the difference between the percentage of Internet users in the “developed” and the “least developed” countries in 2000 was only about 25 people per 100, whereas by 2010 it had leaped to more than 68 people per 100.  Despite growth in the number of Internet users in the developing countries, they were likewise still 50 people per 100 behind the “developed” countries in 2010.  The differences between rich and poor are thus getting dramatically bigger rather than lessening.

As 2012 gets underway, let us all commit ourselves more strongly than ever before to ensuring that these trends are reversed, and that the world’s poorest and most marginalised are indeed able to benefit from the ICTs that so many people living in the richest countries of the world now take for granted.

One aspect of data on Internet usage that I find particularly frustrating is the difficulty of finding accurate information on social media usage.  This is especially important when there is so much rhetoric about the ways in which such media are transforming social, economic, political and cultural life.  It seems to me that, once again, this may well be true of the world’s richest 10% or so of people, but is scarcely true of the majority!

Facebook, for example, is renowned for how little information it shares, with its statistics page only giving very sparse information about five categories of data, including the ‘fact’ that there are 800 million active users.  But what does “Active Users” mean?  According to Facebook it is people who have returned to the site in the last 30 days, although we are told that half of these (c.400 million) use Facebook every day.  If the world’s population is taken as being ‘approximately’ 6.984 billion, that means that about 1 in 17.46 people are using Facebook every day.  Before we get too carried away with the enormity of this figure, we should recognise that this is only 5.7% of the world’s population, which means that a huge 94.3% of the world’s people do not use Facebook daily!

It is likewise not that easy to find out detailed data from Twitter, although officially some 177 million Tweets were sent on 11 March 2011.  In the above vein, though, it should be noted that this is equivalent to only 1 per every 2.5% of the world’s population (some useful sites providing more comprehensive visual summaries of data on Twitter include MarketingGum and digitalbuzz, although these are becoming rather dated; see also report on CMSWire). In September 2011, Twitter announced that it had 100 million active global users logging in once a month – but again this only represents 1.4% of the world’s population!

When we read about how Facebook and Twitter are going to change the world, we therefore need to think very carefully about whose world, and the kind of world they might create.  To be sure, digital technologies have enormous potential to serve the interests of the poorest and most marginalised, and the numbers of users of services such as Twitter and Facebook are indeed increasing impressively, but with such low levels of global reach they are not yet the dominant force that many would claim them to be – or indeed some users might like to think they are!  So, how many people have more than 1000 followers on Twitter?!

This is rightly a qualification in the old medieval sense of the word ‘Master’, whereby someone only achieves the status when they have served an appropriate apprenticeship, learned the skills and knowledge requisite to become a journeyman, and then produced a master-piece that members of a guild thinks sufficiently highly of to elevate them to the status of a Master.   In this light, the dissertation can be seen as the ‘master-piece’ that all candidates have to produce before they are welcomed into the Institute!

One of the things that most impressed me was the way in which the Institute recently developed a policy of reasonable accommodation and special consideration, that specifically addresses ways through which students with a range of disabilities and other special circumstances can indeed participate in the examination process.

It was therefore with a real sense of sadness – at least for me – that pressures of work in my new role as CEO of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation meant that in the autumn I decided that I could not continue in my role at the Institute.  I was overwhelmed by the generosity of so many members of the Institute who hosted me to a wonderful dinner at The Don in London (not the picture here, which is from a MW gathering in Napa).  Not only that, they each gave me a superb bottle of wine from their cellars, and I would just like to thank them all here for their amazing generosity.  What a wine list this makes (thanks to John for noting them down!):

• Pouilly-Fuissé, Vergécosse, 2007 (Arabella)
• Barbaresco Riserva, Giacomo Conterno, 1955 (Arne)
• Mittelheimer St. Nikolaus, Riesling Auslese, Wegeler-Deinhard, 1976 (Barbara)
• Chêne Bleu, Aliot (Vaucluse), 2007 (Clive)
• Château Figeac, St. Émilion, 2001 (Hugo)
• Château Gloria, St. Julien, St. Julien, 1995 (Keith)
• Clos du Marquis, Saint-Julien, 1983 (Marcia)
• Viña Tondonia, Rioja Reserva, 1991 (Mark)
• Domaine Huet, Vouvray Pétillant Brut, 2000 (Neil)
• Bricco San Carlo, Monferrato Rosso, 2002 (Patricia)
• Royal Somló, Hungary (Peter)
• Croft Port, 1970 (Robin)
• Tantalus Old Vines Riesling, 2008 (Siobhan)

The challenge will undoubtedly be to decide when to drink these very special wines – or perhaps more appropriately, with whom and alongside what food!

Thanks again so much to the Institute for all that I have learnt, and for the friendship of so many Masters of Wine.

Click to view slideshow.

• the purposes of a PhD and the characteristics of those who have PhDs
• the quality of a PhD; do we need standards?
• alternative modes of delivery for doctorates
• the brain drain

Although the number of participants was small, the discussion was highly interesting, and the mind map below attempts to capture what we discussed (click WISE 2011 for a .pdf version).

Click to view slideshow.

Click to view slideshow.

Stephen and Rhonda were the people who  identified Orange as being a great place to make wine, planting their first vineyard there back in 1983 (the adjacent picture).  They had begun making wine from grapes grown at the Glenfinlass vineyard near Wellington in New South Wales in the mid-1970s, and had subsequently spent the next decade trying to identify the best possible environment for making fine wine in Australia.  Eventually, they hit upon Orange, or more specifically as Stephen recalls “those elevated areas to the West and North West of Orange anchored by Middle Ordovician geology of the Orange Shadforth association of soils. These soils are low to moderate in vigour, warm and free draining gravel based soils which hug the northern edge of the Mount Canobolas volcanic red mountain earth plateau. They provide good air drainage for frost control and provide plenty of opportunity with their red clay base to construct hill side dams for irrigation…”  To find out more, check out Bloodwood’s history in more detail.

So, finding myself with a spare weekend in Canberra, I took the opportunity to get in touch with them, and see if they just might be around.  Wow – what hospitality!  A friend drove me the three-and-a-half hours there – thanks so much Rob! And then Stephen and Rhonda drove me back to Canberra last Sunday.  What generosity.  It was wonderful to see how they have transformed the place in the last 17 years – I took the photo alongside from almost exactly the same position that the 1983 one above was taken from!  Note the tree at the right side, and likewise the one in leaf in the middle left of both photos!

Bloodwood is not only a beautiful vineyard and winery, but it is also one where wildlife – well, most wildlife – is encouraged.  Rarely have I been to a vineyard where the annual sacrifice of grapes to the birds is treated with such equanimity – but as the photos of the landscape and Rosellas below indicate, Stephen and Rhonda have managed to achieve a wonderfully colourful balance.

Click to view slideshow.

And the wines are brilliant too!  Given my love of Burgundy, I have to confess that I like their Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs best.  As their latest online list comments:

• 2009 Chardonnay: “Intense stone and grapefruit blossom introduce the delicate, racy palate of this fine Bloodwood Chardonnay. With flinty minerality at its core and purity of fruit across the palate, this is a crisp, refreshing wine to enjoy with pleasure in the medium term.”
• 2009 Pinot Noir: “This perfumed, hand crafted Pinot Noir with its subdued sanguine hues and charming cherry blossom aromas entices you into a beguiling and gently delicious blood plum rich world couched in subtle barrel ferment char. Those ladies old handbags are slinking about the palate again, complementing the delicate tannins and distinguished bouquet of this fine wine”

Bloodwood can be visited by appointment – and, staying with them for a couple of days, it was fascinating to witness first hand how Stephen and Rhonda share their love and passion for wine with all their visitors – no matter how knowledgeable or inexperienced they are!

Bloodwood is a truly special place, crafted with amazing love, care and passion by very special people.  It’s scarcely surprising that they make such wonderful wines!

Click to view slideshow.

The premises underlying my research were that:

• all too often, new software and hardware are designed for the mass market, and then need to be ‘adapted’ to suit the ‘needs’ of poor and marginalised people
• frequently, well-intentioned new technologies are developed in some of the richer parts of the world and then ‘applied’ in poorer countries; researchers are then surprised that there is little take up for their products
• hence, we still need to get a much better understanding of the needs of these communities, and focus much more on designing technologies explicitly with their interests in mind
• China has 18% of the world’s population, and so the market size of marginalised communities makes it worth developing products commercially for them

The resultant data are so rich that it is difficult to summarise them in detail.  However, the following seem particularly pertinent

Rural areas

• The diversity of people and communities in rural areas of China is replicated in a diversity of needs.  ‘One size fits all’ solutions are not appropriate, yet the size of the market for particular groups is nevertheless very large given China’s overall population
• Almost everyone already has at least one mobile ‘phone – mobiles are already widely used for information and communication, even for Internet access.  There are real implications for Africa – if electricity and connectivity can be provided
• Economic information is particularly desired – especially on such things as agricultural input prices and market prices – particularly by men.  I was surprised at how dominant and significant this was.
• There seem to be important gender differences in usage – women placed greater emphasis on social communication and health information; young male migrant workers in contrast seemed dominated by a desire to use mobile broadband to meet with girls.
• Value for money is important – c. RMB 2-3 per month is all that most people are willing to pay for subscription services
• Trust of source of information is also very important – there seems to be a lot of bogus messaging – and differing views as to what kind of organisation was most trustworthy.
• There is real potential for village level training in effective use of mobiles – especially by women for women
• For many users, the existing functionality of mobiles is more than they can cope with

Disabilities

• There is huge potential for innovative hardware and software solutions – many interesting ideas were proposed
• There is therefore a large opportunity for sharing good global practice with colleagues in China in the use of ICTs for people with disabilities in China
• Information about location and direction is crucial for blind people – we need to think more innovatively about how to deliver on this
• Screen size and configuration (not touch screen) are very important for blind people – Blackberry wins out over iPhones here!
• There is an enormous opportunity for audio books (not only for blind people). Perhaps a civil society organisation could develop this, and even market audio books to generate income.
• Security code challenges are important for blind people
• Shopping information – much potential for RFID and 2D bar codes for blind people.
• A powerful text scanner and reader in a mobile phone for blind people would be useful
• Visualisation and touch/vibration of sound could also be developed further

There is a huge agenda ahead, and I am enthusiastic about ways in which we can encourage delivery on some of these exciting opportunities.  Thanks so much to BIS, Lanzhou University and Peking University for supporting this research, and to all those who contributed through their wisdom and hospitality