Yes, Oxbridge and the Ivy League do keep an eye on each other, and Harvard says it can learn from Oxbridge .. and the lesson is ‘face time’.

The international university league table puts Cambridge - the English one - ahead of Harvard for teaching quality, and Harvard is listening up. Their recommending smaller classes and providing more, and substantially greater, inducement for faculty and students to spend time together.

But this should be no surprise, after all people pay hansomely for face time. A seat at dinner with someone like Blair will cost £1000 or more, a seat at his table, a hundred times that. But the rewards can be great, your there with the main man, the big cheese, the big whahoobah, and you can have your moment to influence and to learn. So why isn’t face time a bigger deal at univeristies? How come people aren’t demanding more of it? And why don’t the government start measuring it (they measure everything else!).

Oxbridge and Harvard aren’t wrong - face time with your professor/tutor is an excellent educational quality indicator, and only political expediency prevents its adoption. After all, how many British Universities would look bad if even Harvard are improving their act?