We are pleased to introduce a new occasional column on ICEF Monitor this week. “Five for Friday” is a collection of some of the more eye-catching and varied items that we’ve been reading of late and we present them here for your end-of-week reading pleasure.

“Language schools and social media“
A handy summary of social media channels most commonly used by English language schools, based on a survey of 1,505 school websites, and with some handy tips too.

“University of Windsor faces $24M lawsuit by recruiting firm“
Things have gone badly wrong between the University of Windsor and its previous recruitment partner, Higher-Edge. The latter is now suing the university for CDN $24.1 million.

“5 easy ways to optimise your website images“
Web pages are getting bigger these days and often the use of larger images (and more of them) is a big factor. Put your web page on a diet – and get faster page loads and better search optimisation in the process – with these image shrinking tips.

“Global higher education’s winners and losers are focus of meeting“
When does internationalisation among universities alleviate inequities in education (and otherwise) and when does it exacerbate them? This topic was discussed at the recent Going Global event held by the British Council, which also revealed new research on the spread, and the politics, of English-language instruction in markets around the world.

“Strength in numbers? The advantages of multiple rankings“
This is a study by Michael Sauder (University of Iowa) and Wendy Espeland (Northwestern University) that highlights some important implications in the way students interpret university rankings. Their research especially looks at situations where one ranking model dominates, as opposed to areas of study for which multiple ranking schemes are commonly used.