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World in brief – 26 March 2015

Source: RexUnited StatesUAE critic is now persona non grataA New York University lecturer has been barred from travelling to the United Arab Emirates to visit the university’s campus there because he...

Saudi delivers undiplomatic verdict on UK universities

‘Lower standards’ at some institutions a result of rush to recruit overseas students, says embassy’s cultural attaché

26 March 2015

Scored or floored? – How the REF has made winners and losers in Hefce’s funding allocations

The Palestinian academy: pressing concerns and future prospects

Matthew Reisz examines how scholars in the region cope with constraints as they continue to hope for a possible future independent state

Peter Medway, 1941-2015

A researcher who greatly enhanced our understanding of the importance of writing skills within secondary English teaching has died

Q&A with Christine Chinkin

We speak to the inaugural director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics

Make mine a double first

A whistleblower’s account of how an institution manipulated graduate employment statistics made for sobering reading, but it also drove the Twitterati to drink-related puns

Grant winners – 26 March 2015

National Institute for Health ResearchEfficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programmeAward winner: Andrea Grace RockallInstitution: Imperial College LondonValue: £578,090Development and evaluation of...

News in brief – 26 March 2015

Source: Chinese University of Hong KongRoyal SocietyNobelist wins presidential ballotNobel laureate Sir Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan has been named president elect of the Royal Society, after a...

Piled Higher and Deeper, by Jorge Cham – 26 March 2015

Obsolete differences

Aristotle first divided the arts from the sciences and, on balance, I think he got it right (“Two tribes? Look for similarities instead of spotting differences”, Opinion, 19 March). Works of art are...

The right answer for MCQs

Contrary to the view expressed by Hugh Fletcher, the practice of penalising wrong answers in multiple-choice tests is normatively inferior to simply counting the number of right answers (“Exams with...

Self-citation not needed

I am a postdoctoral researcher. Over the past few years, I have taken the inevitable step of peer-reviewing papers for a number of journals in my field of research. I read the article “Peer reviewing...

Good mental health

The stock response to rising levels of demand for psychological and emotional support in universities is that destigmatising mental ill-health leads to more people disclosing problems (“Oxford...

Open at what cost?

The letter “Open to the challenges” (19 March) from Tim Blackman, the acting vice-chancellor of the Open University, wrongly says that our letter “Light and shade in OU student numbers” (12 March)...