No news can be good news
The Pope - No News". Inscribed on evening paper placards by an ingenious publicity manager, that slogan did wonders for sales of the old Star among London catholics on a day when there genuinely was...
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Academia as Roman holiday
You may as well call your local chippie a restaurant as grace Italian universities with the title of university, protests Richard Davies Italian universities have no business participating in...
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Tussle over Tucson
Aisling Irwin's article (THES, April 12) gave the misleading impression that the talks hosted by Qinetics International were set up to counteract the Tucson "Towards the Science of Consciousness"...
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Getting a slice of a bigger pie
The envious may see those with degrees getting better seats in the job market 'house' at their expense, but investment in higher education has benefits for the country's economic prospects too,...
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Cut but not dried
May I appeal for clarity over the term "efficiency"? In one short article (THES, April 19) we have "efficiency gains", "efficiency squeezes" and "efficiency cuts". These terms appear to be used...
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Dubiousness of profit scheme
The suitability of "profit-related pay" to higher education is extremely dubious. What effect would the notion of "profit" have on activities such as counselling students, collaboration between...
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Slipping to unfreedom
The enthusiasm to define the essence of "graduateness", identify the sine qua non of the degree grade, and establish the panel of guardians of all that is unalloyed about the gold standard of the...
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Slipping to unfreedom
I do not believe grade inflation comes from within institutions (THES, April 19). I have experienced external examiners deciding that we "under mark" and substantially raising our grades, lifting...
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Really stupid idea
With reference to Ian Stewart's article on the National Lottery (THES, April 12) I followed his advice to choose "something really stupid like 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48" on Saturday afternoon, as I am...
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Border crossing closed
How right Geoff Mulgan (THES, March 15) is to draw attention to the persistent, but constraining, habit of categorising knowledge into traditional academic subject areas. Some years ago the...
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Quality with a very modern irony
Jennie Bristow's piece on the effects of quantity on quality in universities (THES, April 5) contained a singular irony. The course she cited as an example of the "access-driven" restructured,...
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Don's Diary
Friday. An early morning trip from Blackheath to Norwich. At the university printers I take delivery of two boxes of my "bare hands" monograph on Fermat's last theorem, published by the Mathematics...
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Forth's lessons from down under
Visiting Australia seems to be in fashion. On arrival here, I found that I was following in the wake of Eric Forth, the minister for higher education. His purpose is similar to mine: to find out what...
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Change out of Africa
In spite of its considerable achievements in the past three decades, the University of ABC finds itself in a precarious situation." Thus begins many a report by the World Bank or other external...
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Mummy, I want to be a housewife
Why is it that two decades after the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts many women are still turning their backs on careers and opting to stay at home? Catherine Hakim calls on feminists to get...