Leader: Sykes' unhelpful jibe
Quangos need lively minds that are capable of challenging accepted wisdom if they are to improve the services they oversee. Higher education funding councils are no exception: the parlous state of...
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Leader: Brown looks on the bright side
Beyond the euphoria induced by the chancellor's promises to boost research and preserve funding levels in higher education in addition to the anticipated fee income, universities now face a number of...
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Leader: Sykes' unhelpful jibe
Quangos need lively minds that are capable of challenging accepted wisdom if they are to improve the services they oversee. Higher education funding councils are no exception: the parlous state of...
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Action that harms the innocent 1
The action of university teachers in boycotting everything to do with student assessment is morally contemptible. The AUT (aka the Association for Useless Tactics) has a long and inglorious history...
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Action that harms the innocent 2
In your leader (March 12), you state that "before long, exam papers will have to be set". This does not accurately reflect the urgency needed in settling the Association of University Teachers...
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Action that harms the innocent 3
Discuss: A 3.44 per cent increase backdated to August 2003 is added to lecturers' pay packets in June 2004. Calculate the actual value of the award in percentage terms to an individual currently at...
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Warring ideologies 1
On the issue of the Bush administration's deplorable politically motivated attitude towards stem-cell research, Elizabeth Blackburn, member of the President's Council on Bioethics until her recent...
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Warring ideologies 2
There's a certain irony in the fact that in the same week you publish an article lambasting the Bush administration for its ideological approach to science you also publish "Sleep easy with your baby...
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Misplaced bets 1
Stephen Unwin claims that God has a 67 per cent chance of existing (March 12). What makes me suspect that anybody presenting such an argument is 100 per cent likely to believe in God? Since there are...
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Misplaced bets 2
Using Unwin's original approach to statistics, I've calculated leprechauns at 20/1, the tooth fairy at 7/1, and a whopping 6/4 on for Father Christmas. Of course, a lot depends on what you accept as...
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CMI update
The comments about the Cambridge-MIT Institute (March 5) are at least a year out of date and do not reflect current views. References to CMI in the Lambert report and the innovation review are...
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Market fundamentals 1
We need to think carefully about how financial assistance is employed. Fiona Devine (Soapbox, March 12) has the right thrust, but is in danger of choosing the wrong blade. The University of the West...
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Market fundamentals 2
Many arguments against the higher education bill have been ignored. By the time of a 2009 review, the "higher education market" will be regulated by the World Trade Organisation. Besides the...
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Market fundamentals 3
Bob Brecher suggests "perhaps the free-market fundamentalism unleashed on our universities can eventually be reversed" (Professional, March 5). UK universities are overwhelmingly funded by tax-...
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Market fundamentals 4
Bob Brecher sees higher education's problems as being due mainly to free-market fundamentalism. As a private tutor, I don't see the problem. When a student pays a teacher, he has a keen interest in...