Timetabling, transport between institutions, record-keeping and reporting could all make for a logistical nightmare.
The study, by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, is the first to compare institutions' records of how long students take to complete PhDs.
The elite institutions' records will be criticised and individual colleges named and shamed in a hard-hitting annual report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.
Researchers from the University of Sussex in England and other institutions recorded elephant calls at the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Kenya, played them back (using a kind of high-tech boom box in the back of a Land Rover) and watched how family groups reacted.
The financial sector was also heard from, with American Express booking profits of 32 cents a share, 20 cents better than expected and following in the trend of banking institutions recording surprising first-quarter results.
Even in tertiary health care institutions, recording of a comprehensive pedigree is uncommon.
The sampling frame was the list of institutions recorded in a national database (FINESS), where every medico-social and healthcare institution in France is recorded.
The single Institutions recorded a list of clinico-pathological features in a dedicated database, as specified below.
The 105 participating NH accounted for more than half of the institutions recorded in the survey (n = 632, 52.7%).
