Putting the 'bus' into business

Our university has thrown itself behind the recent call for all postgraduates to go beyond their narrow areas of study.

Janet Fluellen, our Commissar for Curriculum Development, has announced that she fully supports the report from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that stresses the need for all postgraduate courses to include "business awareness". To this end, she will shortly be initiating a series of open-top bus trips to Poppleton's Outer Ring Road Industrial Park.

Postgraduates on these buses will have the opportunity for a photo-stop at such ongoing businesses as the Poppleton Pork Products Offal Rendering Plant, and will be introduced by trained guides to such essential business terms as "balance sheet", "ball park", "benchmarking", "hard sell", "liquidity" and "insolvency".

Naming the names

Members of our ever-growing administrative staff have responded with alacrity to the suggestion by Matthew Andrews, academic registrar at Oxford Brookes University, that they should consider the appropriateness of continuing to describe themselves as "administrators".

Speaking to The Poppletonian, our Director of Corporate Affairs, Jamie Targett, said there was a general acceptance of Mr Andrews' argument that the word "administrator" could be seen as too "passive" to characterise a management that sticks its oar into every aspect of academic life.

Targett did not, however, feel that such substitute terms as "managers" or "professional staff" captured the thrusting, proactive role of his ever-growing team. It was for this reason that he would shortly be proposing that senior managers assume the designation "commissar".

He agreed that the term "people's commissar" might best characterise his own functions going forward, but rejected "the scurrilous suggestion" that he had also considered adopting the title "Ozymandias".

Please call home

Our leading campus astrophysicist, Professor L.D. Bamberger, has declared that "there is a distinct probability that intelligent life occurs elsewhere".

Professor Bamberger conceded that there was currently no sign of such life at Poppleton University. However, given the existence of more than 150 British institutions devoted to higher education, the chances that there may be signs of intelligent life on at least one of these campuses was "within the accepted bounds of probability".

Smaller still and smaller

In a shock move, the Higher Education Academy has announced that it will shortly be changing its title.

A spokesperson for the organisation explained that the slimmed down future of the HEA meant that a more modest designation than "Academy" had become appropriate. He confirmed that at the next board meeting, it would be proposed that the HEA be henceforth known as the Higher Education Annexe.

Thought for the week

(contributed by Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development)

Here's a wonderful reminder of how the lessons of personal development must take deep root before they become truly meaningful.

"The longest road can be the 18 inches between your head and your heart."

(Eighteen inches is of course also 45.72cm, but somehow this is less memorable.)

lolsoc@dircon.co.uk.