Monday 1 June 2015

Japanese Universities: Among the Best in the World?

You can read my most recent article for the Asahi Shinbun, 'Why are Japanese universities not regarded as among the best in the world?' here: 


As a footnote, a little anecdote: an editor inserted the subheading, 'The Criteria is Suspect' leading me to email him that 'The Criteria are Suspect' was actually grammatically correct...but looking into this I saw that the use of criteria as a group singular is now one of the great battlefronts - the Ypres salient - of the English language. Apparently the old guard cling to criterion/ criteria as the last redoubt, despairing that it will ever go the way of datum/ data or agendum/ agenda. 

As a little test, I thought I would wait and see if any complaints came in, but none so far...so I decided to high five with the kids and let 'criteria' hang loose as a group singular too...

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