University gets smart

After all, when generations of students have managed perfectly adequately with pens, paper and textbooks, why make a needless investment in hi-tech equipment, particularly at a time when university finances are being stretched as never before?

Yet it is the crisis over university funding that is of particular relevance here. For, while some will dismiss Leeds University's idea as a gimmick, there will be many medical graduates who will wish that Apple's iPhones had been on hand when they were desperately trying to juggle study time with practical experience on hospital wards. And equally, there will be many sixth-form students wondering which university will offer them the best medical training who will note this latest development with interest.

Of course, it takes a lot more than a handful of smartphones to make a good medical course. But it is a small advance such as this which distinguishes those universities that are forward-thinking and aspirational from the rest.

For it is easy to forget that, when many students are struggling to find a place at university at all, at the higher end of the market universities are fighting an increasingly difficult battle to attract the best students.

Elitism has become a dirty word in certain academic circles, yet with overseas students now providing a large portion of universities' income, a distinguished institution such as Leeds, which has just fallen out of the table of the world's top 100 universities, must strive to regain its place in the highest echelon. Free iPhones may not accomplish that, but the type of innovative thinking behind this latest idea just might.