Leader: Set straight by a painful setback
Sometimes an unpleasant knock can be useful in forcing people to rethink the most appropriate way ahead
Sometimes an unpleasant knock can be useful in forcing people to rethink the most appropriate way ahead

Pan-European network allows access to national cutting-edge biology facilities. Paul Jump reports
A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

A century on, the Titanic’s tragic tale remains a valuable focus for teaching. Jon Marcus writes
• Well done to the University of Manchester for clinching this year's University Challenge title. It is the third time a Manchester team has won the television quiz show in seven years, noted Rebecca...
Anyone who has studied or taught economics is aware of the highly theoretical nature of the subject. For some, this is its appeal. Indeed, my old professor in the discipline once told me that the...

This 19th-century stuffed cyclopic piglet and plaster cast of a rattlesnake - brought to Scotland by Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1904 - are among the strange and sometimes shocking natural...
Washington University in St LouisJennifer R. SmithThe future dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St Louis wants to use her elected position to "promote the education...

In the academy all must have prizes, but nothing breeds success like failure. Steven Schwartz argues that students gain more from blind alleys than from victory processions, as failure engenders the...

Hugh Cunningham ponders our enduring nostalgia for childhoods past and asks if we still yearn for a Romantic ideal

To be ethical, a funding system must recognise that what universities do supports the common good, argues Thomas Docherty

Howard Davies on league tables and rebranding exercises

A fleeting glimpse of a renowned soprano ignited Peter Crisp's lifelong love of song cycles and lieder...but left him pining for an overture

Dissemination of the written word is changing as e-books proliferate. But how will it affect academics and the publishing industry? Andrew Franklin reads between the lines
We wish to take issue with Paul Ramsden's argument concerning the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning ("A poor policy poorly managed leaves little to show for £315 million", 15 March). We...