Oxford produced a storming performance to overturn the odds and beat Cambridge to win the 157th Xchanging Boat Race.

On occasions the Boat Race has felt more like the United Nations at play than a contest between two sets of students from Britain's most famous academic institutions, but this afternoon's confrontation on the Tideway will feel more like those from an earlier era.

In an item in the Pandora column, 'BBC man is skewered by university tabloid' published on 29 October 2009, we referred to allegations about  Lizo Mzimba made in an article published on a Cambridge University student website. Mr Mzimba issued proceedings in the High Court and as part of the settlement, a unilateral statement was read out in open court on his behalf. The statement noted that the student website had published a full retraction and apology for its inaccurate and defamatory allegations. We acknowledge that the allegations were false and have paid Mr Mzimba substantial damages and his legal costs.

Cambridge Boat Club president Derek Rasmussen says the "testosterone is flying" in the Light Blue camp as they prepare to defend their crown in the Boat Race on Saturday.

Not a single university has so far come up with a proposal to charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 a year – the figure ministers hoped would be the average, and the benchmark they subsequently budgeted for.

More than 600 Oxbridge academics are demanding a halt to implementing government proposals for tuition fees to rise to up to £9,000 a year.

Only one pupil in every 100 on free school meals makes it into a top Russell group university, a study reveals.

Shares in the back-office outsourcing group Xchanging lost more than half their value yesterday after the group issuing a second profits warning, cancelled its dividend and announced the departure of its founder and chief executive, David Andrews.

Cambridge University has led the way in becoming the first higher education institution to announce plans for charging the maximum £9,000-a-year fee for all its courses. It made it clear that one of the main reasons was that it expected "most if not all of our peers to charge the maximum".