Blue skies or no sky at all
We must save pure research - it could be key to Earth's future, says Kevin Fong
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Leader: Leadership comes at a premium
Vice-chancellors' salaries have risen, but so have the demands of the job they do and the economic challenges they faceFor once, academics can start to feel justly rewarded. The new pay framework has...
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From where I sit - Erasmus opens Spanish vistas
There was a time when Erasmus Mundus was just a dream for the many Spanish students who whiled away their Sunday afternoons imagining what it would be like to study abroad.We must not forget that the...
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John Golby, 1935-2009
John Golby, a leading historian of popular culture, has died.He was born on 16 July 1935 and brought up in Wembley, London, where his father was catering manager at the football stadium. After two...
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University of Oxford - New media to hike state intake
The proportion of the University of Oxford's British undergraduates who studied at state schools rose to 55.4 per cent in 2008, up 2 per cent compared with the previous year. Now the university is...
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RAE scales tipped to unbalance humanities 1
There were 83 submissions to the history unit of assessment in the 2008 research assessment exercise, and the panel found some evidence of international quality in every one.We are deeply...
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RAE scales tipped to unbalance humanities 2
Paul Whiteley argues that Hefce ignored the results of the RAE in allocating funding for 2009-10 (Letters, 12 March). He cites a lack of correlation between the average RAE score and the change in...
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Lifelong affairs 1
In the past week, three universities - Bristol, Reading and Manchester - closed their public programmes of courses for adults.The closure of such programmes, which have reached hundreds of thousands...
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Lifelong affairs 2
As the proposer of the Parliamentary early day motion in support of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL), I was surprised by your account of the organisation's Westminster lobby with...
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Different rules apply pre-92
Subtle observer he may be of university politics and policy, but when it comes to those upstart crows the post-92 universities, Alan Ryan likes his slogans as much as the next minister ("It is all a...
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Dancing to a one-note tune
The fashion in universities is to at best ignore and at worst undermine the methodological and intellectual integrity of disciplines by creating spurious new school identities. These pop into...
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Passion over pathology
Individual differences compose the most controversial area of psychology. In your collection of "geniuses" all the "celebrated" figures are male, as are almost all the senior academics who comment on...
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Politics of past and present
Frank Furedi pretends that my book, Civic War and the Corruption of the Citizen, is a theory of international relations, but it is exactly the opposite: a study of constitutional politics that...
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MPs bark up the wrong tree
Your report on the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee evidence session failed to highlight the real dangers of the proposals being advanced by a small number of pundits ("...
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Pay packets of excellence
It's been a good year. In 2007-08, academic pay rose more rapidly than the national average. Vice-chancellors took home the big money, but thanks to the credit crunch, this year may be the high-water...