Who runs universities? To the chagrin of vice-chancellors, as accountability and funding difficulties have come to bear, governing bodies, be they councils (of old universities) or governing boards (...
Imagine that a Quality Assurance Agency panel encountered a department that could not tell students whether they would be required to sit a final examination, when that exam might take place, what...
Australia's quality chief David Woodhouse (Letters, THES , April 5) wilfully misreads my article (Features, THES , March 22). I did not base my argument on "the analogy with financial audit". My...
David Woodhouse makes the strange assertion that Michael Loughlin's article is UK-centred. Why not, if that is what Loughlin set out to analyse? Woodhouse thinks academics waste their time by...
In Tony Tysome's full-page encomium for Cardiff University, the word "teaching" does not appear (Analysis, THES , April 5). It is as if Cardiff were an elite research institute, not a place getting...
The THES Diary (April 5) reported that the textbook Decision Analysis for Management Judgment costs £16.04 secondhand and £15.99 new on the amazon.co.uk website. As one of the authors, I recommend:...
Now that the Association for University Teachers' election for general secretary is over, I would like to express my gratitude to Paul Cottrell, who stood in as acting general secretary. The union's...
Pity the poor university chaplain who believes in evolution and tries to help students relate their religious ideas to what they are learning but is obliged to compete against fringe Christian groups...
I am pleased to see academics of other disciplines defending biological sciences against the pseudo-scientific arguments of creationists (Letters, THES April 5). As well as attacking the scientific...
I am baffled by the manner in which postmodernism arouses such prejudice in scholars. Martin Hammersley's comments (Letters, THES , April 5) on my letter ( THES , March 29) are a case in point. I...
The "donations for degrees" allegation that led to the resignation of two fellows at Pembroke College, Oxford ("Price of Pembroke scandal is autonomy", THES , March 29) raises serious questions about...
Many school-leavers attaining the necessary A levels to attend such august institutions as Pembroke College, Oxford, have probably had amounts not dissimilar to £300k invested in their education. By...
Chris Woodhead's article ("Trouble in the trades", Soapbox, THES , March 29) reminded me of when I was a general studies lecturer in the 1980s and charged with widening the education and improving...
Semir Zeki's review of Out of Mind (Books, THES , March 29) rehashes splinters of the debate on blindsight that took place more than a decade ago. The picture the reviewer sketches is so outdated...
Continuing our series of Big Science Questions, Chris Bunting asks what makes people violent, while Dolf Zillmann (bottom) reviews the role of brain structures. A solitary matador and a half-crazed...