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News in brief - 4 July 2013

Women in scienceThey’re gone – but why and where?The Lords Science and Technology Committee is to carry out an inquiry into why so many women drop out of academic science. Its notice announcing the...

Stick up for the EU and its euros

Cardiff v-c Colin Riordan tells sector to support Europe if a referendum is held

Lofty ideals

In the 1960s, the University of Stirling’s first principal, the late Tom Cottrell, entertained us students at his new home on the beautiful campus. Perhaps his present-day successor Gerry McCormac...

Give and take

Chris Higgins reflects on university funding against the backdrop of the coalition’s continuing cuts to education spending (“(Almost) all donations gratefully received”,  June). He focuses on...

Old, familiar stain

Regarding “Barefaced cheating in China’s bull market for student fraud” (News, 13 June): this phenomenon is not new, as I found similar problems in the early 1990s when I was an academic. The easiest...

Memory lapse

In her generous review of Permanent Present Tense: The Man with No Memory and What He Taught the World, Suzanne Corkin’s enthralling study of the amnesiac Henry Molaison, Morgan Barense highlights...

Too short a seasoning

I am worried about the “‘oven-ready chickens’ for business” that City of Bath College lecturer John Curry thinks the UK needs (“Cut the arts, share the pain or scrap the REF: reader panel thoughts on...

Tours of booty

Last week the real University of Oxford held open days as part of its widening-access initiative. Fantasy Oxford has open days for tourists every day, with the Mad Hatter Tour and the Harry Potter...

‘Crown jewels’ are flawed

Universities and science minister David Willetts has persuaded the coalition to spend millions of pounds on a new national birth cohort study, and Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee – although “...

Piled Higher and Deeper by Jorge Cham - 4 July 2013

‘Sum up your thesis in three minutes’ competition

Clear, engaging and jargon-free: years of research explained in 180 seconds

UCU condemns ‘unsettling’ role-matching test

Union passes motion of no confidence in University of Northampton’s restructuring exercise

Exiting Leighton Andrews earns qualified praise

Welsh institutions hedge their bets on recollections of education minister’s term

QAA review U-turn is music to for-profit’s ears

Watchdog backs down after institutional appeal for second time

Your place or mine?

‘The v-c will see you now’It’s been a busy week for our vice-chancellor. In between presiding over a further round of staff redundancies, he’s been on site supervising the extensive renovations to...