Opinion

The ease with which essays can be bought and the difficulty of grading them fairly means they should no longer be used for assessment, says Phil Race

European funders’ beefed-up open access mandate sounds the death knell for subscription publishing, but academic Armageddon is no closer, says Lenny Teytelman

A move to combat India’s love affair with predatory journals is an encouraging sign – even if it took a newspaper exposé to prompt it, says Pushkar

A labyrinthine visa process and perverse decision-making are making life increasingly untenable for non-Palestinian academics, says Raja Shehadeh

The former Bank of England governor’s broadside against academic pension cuts relied on ‘reckless’ and ‘absurd’ assumptions, say John Ralfe and Bernard Casey

Nick Hillman explains why the much-anticipated UK review of overseas student policy gets it so wrong

How can contract academics inspire action and hope in their students when they feel hopeless, asks Sarika Bose 

Universities in the US are dealing with an unprecedented number of sexual violence complaints and greater scrutiny of the legal processes that follow, writes Emily Mack 

Many feel that government neglect has taken away a rare source of higher education and culture from the surrounding working-class neighbourhood, writes Stephanie Reist 

Erecting walls around university research labs will only leave us all worse off, writes Andrew Williamson 

UK academics prize the USS pension. Sacrificing a scheme ‘in rude health’ on the basis of overcautious calculations would cause more disaffection

Students’ unions are rich sources of information and have the capacity to deliver outcomes on issues such as employment and retention, argues Jim Dickinson 

Gender bias in the academy is all too real, but we should be just as wary of confirmation bias, says Terri Apter 

Education can and should be central to good living. That insight is key to tackling the student mental health crisis, says Beth Guilding

A failure to treat staff fairly and consistently impedes academic standards and hurts students, says Sheikh Nahid Neazy

Universities must look beyond a narrow conception of impact to communicate the true value of higher education to society, say Ulrike Felt, Maximilian Fochler, Andreas Richter, Renée Schroeder and Lisa Sigl

As a senior lecturer in special needs education, David Bara says having first-hand experience of this world makes his lecturing and research invaluable to the field 

Left with an inconclusive residency application, Alexandra Bulat asks when the government will end the double act of praising EU students while leaving their futures in the UK uncertain

Not admitting retrospective medical evidence of mental illness in appeals against poor grades does an injustice to vulnerable students, say Daniel Sokol and Julia Heller

We are digitising the remnants of a (successful) 1897 protest against women entering the University of Cambridge to ensure the stories of pioneering women in higher education aren’t forgotten, says Sian Collins 

Heriot-Watt University is taking a new approach to transnational education by operating as a single institution with locations in Scotland, Malaysia and Dubai, says Richard A. Williams 

The mercury has fallen, but an alarming number of issues threaten to ignite and, potentially, give the UK sector some painful burns

Dianne Berry and Kim Hackett unpack new guidance for research excellence framework submissions that attempts to ensure staff who have individual circumstances can still contribute to output

Written articles may usually be the most appropriate scholarly medium, but why are the alternatives so undervalued, asks Paul Craddock

Junior scholars need all the experiences they can get, but their digital know-how can also boost the impact of academic events, says Alice Kelly

With the cost of UK participation in EU research no longer hidden post-Brexit, a robust case for Horizon Europe membership must be made, says Graeme Reid

Australian universities are nervous about how governments, students and their own academics will react to new legal curbs on ‘foreign influence’, says Dean Forbes

The toppling of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could become a global example for restorative justice on campus, if only university leaders could see it that way, writes Alexander Peeples 

Transnational research is vital to academic pursuits but it shouldn’t be carried out at the cost of vulnerable people in resource-poor countries, says Kate Chatfield 

Universities are intellectual spaces and censorship of opinion is not the right way to solve freedom of speech conflicts, says Dawn Freshwater  

Universities and established researchers have a responsibility to support the well-being of their PhD students, argues Geoffrey Cantor 

Collaborating with our most junior colleagues can be just as rewarding and eye-opening as working with graduate students, argues Jenny Peterson 

If we truly want to widen access to higher education, we must wake up to the fact that a school-leaver isn’t representative of all new university entrants, says Jonathan Wylie 

Goodbye Poppleton. Memorial edition.

Laurie Taylor’s campus creation was loved because it mirrored academics’ own experiences. Although it’s closed, it will live on

Lecture capture has not taken off. Is it time to call in the thespians, asks Michael Marinetto

Soul-searching is required by institutions if they want to survive the alarming decline in student numbers that will leave many classrooms empty, says Jayden Kim

Growing pressure to publish only in elite tier ignores the vital importance of lesser-ranked titles to academia and society, says Adam Graycar

Life as a comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe has many parallels with the experiences of early career academics, explains Anna Ploszajski

Stanley Andrisse, a formerly incarcerated person, says removing the criminal history question from the Common Application is a good step but more needs to be done to give people with a criminal record a second chance

To be a truly global university, metrics must go beyond student enrolment figures and international student welcome weeks, reflects Christopher Hill 

If elite institutions admitted 10 per cent of high school classes there’d be improved university access and social mobility for under-represented students, argues David Orentlicher

The response from business schools to attacks on their relevance and academic offering could be useful to universities under siege, says Angus Laing 

Women get scant enough airtime as it is – they shouldn’t have to use it talking about managing family and career obligations, says Sherry Pagoto

Ilana Akresh says ending Steven Salaita’s employment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on the grounds of hate speech was overly simplified  

The UK’s highly internationalised university system – a major factor in its research success – is a treasure that must be saved from a political altar

Dahl before Dostoevsky? Harry Potter before Proust? It’s time to acknowledge the texts that really constitute the modern literary canon, says Felipe Fernández-Armesto 

New furore over a steep rise in unconditional offers and concerns over student mental health underlines why reform of the UK’s unique admissions system is long overdue, says Julie Kelly

Discussions with students about how marijuana can affect studies and health and talks about its place on campus are needed before the drug becomes legal in Canada, say Alexandra Burnett, Rodney A. Clifton and Gabor Csepregi

Giving students the time and space to make informed decisions about where to study will set them up for success on their educational journey, says Christina Edgar

Perilous drops in student recruitment at UK universities during A-level clearing raise the likelihood of institutional failures, a prospect that remains as politically unpalatable as ever, says Nick Hillman

Nurturing students’ enthusiasm for a subject during their time at university will give them a solid grounding to respond to a lifetime of career changes, says Trevor McMillan 

Threats to cut all postgraduate funding from 2019 in Brazil were thankfully scuppered, says Justin Axel-Berg, but signalled that a long-term strategy for Brazilian higher education is sorely needed 

‘Swivel-eyed’ Brexiteers must acknowledge that leaving with no deal in March would be disastrous for UK higher education, says Hywel Williams

Persuading faculty and staff that online delivery models are a good idea will require collaboration and negotiation, says Michael Stewart

Real-life experience in hospitality operations is vital for a career in this field, but so are courses in psychology, languages and theatre, says Georgette Davey

More student-let social enterprises are a financially sound way to fight social injustices where charities might fall short, argues Robert Phillips 

The official weekly newsletter of the University of Poppleton. Finem respice!

The high cost and visa complexity associated with Western higher education is driving a mushrooming number of African students east, says Kuyok Abol Kuyok

Cutting partner labs out of awarded grant budgets is a common but destructive phenomenon in modern academia, says Anne Carpenter