Blog

Some topics are lightning rods for disagreement, but there are ways to insulate yourself against online vitriol, say Kristine Maloney and Teresa Valerio Parrot

Complicity of Russian universities in the savage assault on Ukraine must lead to severe punishments, write four Ukrainian academics

The University of Gdańsk is housing hundreds, and expects thousands. But couldn’t the burden be shared more widely, asks Agnieszka Piotrowska

Emilia Şercan has exposed a vast array of senior public officials for plagiarising their theses, writes Július Kravjar

The pandemic underlined the value of international university alliances for sharing problems – and solutions, says David Eastwood

Standard mentoring is not enough if we want a resilient, compassionate and happy research workforce, says Mark Reed

The default mode of human problem-solving is to add complexity. But we must try harder to resist, say Leidy Klotz and Robert Sutton

Universities’ oligarchic control of degree provision and metrics’ misguided focus are shortchanging both students and academics, says Murdoch Gabbay

Mental illness has been depicted as the primary occupational health hazard of UK student life since the 1950s, says Sarah Crook

University educators must not be blind to other life goals – like building a savings account, says Brent Lucia 

As war descends on Europe again, how many of the idealistic young scholars defending their country against invasion will live full lives, muses Keith Burnett

For the new technical qualification to be a success, every university must encourage applicants from these courses, says David Gallagher

Boycotting Russia will hinder research, punish the innocent and damage the prospects of a peaceful future, says Binoy Kampmark

Trials suggest that far from being mutually exclusive, both can play an important role, says Kim Eggleton

Any attempt to address regional inequalities must recognise the role of post-92 universities as anchor institutions, says Ian Campbell

A few electronic mailing lists still thrive in the academy, reminding us that peer communication need not be all about ‘building the brand’, says Kate Eichhorn

Students need help to make better course choices and lifelong learners need a flexible application system, says Graeme Atherton

Vice-chancellors and presidents must deliver fully inclusive environments from which female leaders will emerge, says Lucy Meredith

Mathematicians have no excuse. We, of all disciplines, have the expertise to gather and analyse the data, say the heads of four mathematics societies

Transparency, institutional accountability and continual change are all essential, says Georgina Randsley de Moura

Inclusive language, clear expectations and a genuine spirit of collaboration will make academia a more humane sector to work in, says Harvey Graff

Local authorities should work in close collaboration with academic institutions to make international students feel welcome, says James Pitman

A large new survey gives the lie to the idea that liberal arts colleges are more responsive to students’ needs than universities are, notes Samuel Abrams

The furore over the John Comaroff letter means discussions that could boost understanding of sexual harassment won’t occur, says Jonathan Zimmerman 

The Augar response highlights ministers’ hopes that rising costs will make certain courses economically unviable, says Alexis Brown

Universities have a duty to protect students from the power imbalance inherent in a personal relationship with a staff member, says Cara Aitchison

Flexibility, speed and resources are needed to ensure that refugee scholars and students can continue their work, says Jan Palmowski 

Unless pay and conditions improve at UK universities, quality and diversity will enter a downward spiral, says Maria Sobolewska

Canadian universities must also provide the resources to support students through their studies with more scholarships and bursaries, says Opiyo Oloya

An unsustainable strategic choice has been made to worsen the university offer for future students and graduates, says Chris Husbands

Flawed assumptions about how universities and statisticians would react to the trebling of fees are behind today’s retrogressive steps, says Aaron Porter

The academy should be a safe haven for ignorance – provided it is accompanied by a willingness to be respectfully challenged, says Nic Smith

Senior university staff must take responsibility for improving organisational approaches to and understandings of harassment, says Liz Jackson

Offering the opportunity to iteratively paraphrase copied content to lower similarity scores is nothing to do with education, says Július Kravjar

Working-class school-leavers’ fear of debts larger than their parents’ annual incomes is still a big issue, say Geoffrey Alderman and Zoe Morrison 

The Covid experience has strengthened common values and accelerated unification in European higher education, says Ferruccio Resta

The Martyn Percy saga underlines the need for the academic body to be led by one of their own, says Brian Martin

A joint EU-AU document places universities in the vanguard of increased intercontinental collaboration, says Jan Palmowski

Despite China’s rise, even the country’s government recognises that English usage is irrevocable, say Philip Altbach and Gerard Postiglione

A publisher’s move to correct the undue influence of pro-Israel groups on a history textbook shows the value of engagement, says John Chalcraft

Establishing a peer review accreditation scheme would also help incentivise higher standards, says Arfan Ghani

Senior academics who flatter juniors and promulgate a high-minded vision of higher education are all in recruitment mode, says Harvey Graff

The UK government’s White Paper is a good start but needs to do more to link local learning with local needs, says Marius Ostrowski 

Time is running out to strike a deal that will cement the continent’s scientific strength, says Jan Palmowski

Publishers need to examine their biases and universities their support mechanisms, say Avi Staiman, Marnie Jo Petray and Gaillynn Clements

Inhaling one another’s insights could help scholars assuage public confusion about this crucial but confusing concept, says Jacques Berlinerblau

Marketing students in business schools increasingly demand to be taught to use audio-visual software, says Emmanuel Mogaji

If Jordan Peterson and his ilk think business schools have been taken over by a Marxist mob, they clearly haven’t been in one recently, says Carl Rhodes

The Novak Djokovic affair underlines the need to teach that openness to error is the baseline of knowledge, say Raj Persaud and Adrian Furnham

Two years of low-quality online provision has left one stranded international student homeless, unemployed and heartbroken

Random selection from a gender-equal shortlist of qualified candidates would remove the effects of implicit bias, says Nathan Burke

Removing Amy Wax from compulsory courses or revoking her named chair would not contravene her academic rights, says Daniel Carpenter

If universities will not give up NDAs, how can we expect private corporations to do any better, asks Julie Macfarlane

The technological objectification of thought plagued education long before classes were conducted over Zoom, says Kishore Saval

A ban on abortion clinics’ use of university-affiliated doctors is a barefaced interference in universities’ hiring decisions, says Edward Halperin

The publication of three Nature papers demonstrates that money is no substitute for good ideas, open science and collaboration, says Andrea Morello

Classroom skills that previously came naturally to lecturers and students can become very rusty in the online environment, says Christopher Hallenbrook 

Kick-starting a conversation on national funding levels is useful, but collaboration on frontier-led research needs attention, says Jan Palmowski

Marketing claims are often empty, unaccompanied by comprehensive policies, plans, timetables or evaluation criteria, says Harvey Graff

Without it, we could lose sight of the subtleties of the sliding scale of disadvantage and its impact on participation, says Jayne Taylor