Gender pay gap: keep the ‘pity payments’
Giving female scholars one-off sums to ‘compensate’ for the pay gap rewards biology rather than merit, argues Joanna Williams

Giving female scholars one-off sums to ‘compensate’ for the pay gap rewards biology rather than merit, argues Joanna Williams
Elena Tobolkina draws attention to the childcare issues facing early career academics in many UK cities (“Which should I choose: my postdoc or my child?”, Opinion, 9 June). It is incorrect to assert...
John Kingman emphasises the importance of sustaining UK science and maximising its benefits (“UK Research and Innovation: ‘nine brains in one body’”, Opinion, 2 June). But he offers no convincing...
Students prioritising contact hours in surveys strikes me as an example of the well-known phenomenon of respondents offering what they believe to be the correct or desired answer (“Student...
Calculations based on the data for salary gaps between genders was hardly fair to women (“[!University of Essex!] hikes salaries for female professors to eliminate pay gap”, News, 2 June)....
James Tooley’s piece on how the UK academy would be better off outside the European Union was interesting (“Even if Brexit means less funding for universities, we should still vote leave”, 2 June)....

In 2012, the open access biomedical journal eLife was launched to challenge the dominance of titles such as Nature, Science and Cell

A round-up of recent recipients of research council cash

The changes in institutions’ fortunes charted in this year’s Asia University Rankings tables are calculated with the same carefully calibrated performance indicators used for the Times Higher...

In India as in the UK, highly stratified systems have negatives, especially for first-generation students

We have reached a key moment in the development of the region's higher education sector, says Ismail Badat