Cause for complaint
Now that the central plank of the complaints code has been removed ("University reforms loom", THES, March 10), the Quality Assurance Agency's role in upholding student complaints looks very shaky....
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Four and against
When the funding councils decided to withdraw funding support from academic departments with a low PhD completion rate within four years, presumably their intention was to reward those units offering...
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Ofsted: an offer we can all refuse
How wonderfully selfless of Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead to offer the facilities of his organisation to the higher education community (Soapbox, THES, March 10). It seems a splendidly postmodernist...
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Ofsted: an offer we can all refuse
How courageous of Chris Woodhead to admit that "most of us accept much of our working lives as given. We stop asking questions and come to take working practices and the values that underpin them for...
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Biographical note
Biography is indeed shamefully neglected by universities ("Wanted: Cult of personality", THES, March 10). But Nigel Hamilton is not the only person teaching it. For some years now I have taught an MA...
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Research equality
Christopher Bluth's spirited defence of the research assessment exercise (Letters, THES, March 10) would be more convincing if universities were competing on a level playing field. Let us suppose the...
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Research equality
It is hard to see that the RAE as constituted assists women whose work might be thought to be a target for discrimination. To help there, the RAE would have to assign 4s, 5s and so on to each...
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Basic benefits for girls
You note that the World Bank has effectively endorsed the shifting of priorities from basic to higher education for the world's poorest nations ("World Bank enlists HE to narrow poverty gap", THES,...
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Scientists to be paid to explain
Scientists are being discouraged from explaining their work to the public by the fierce competition resulting from the funding councils' research assessment system. The House of Lords report on...
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Minister asked to justify X-ray site
MPs are to demand that science minister Lord Sainsbury provides a detailed explanation of his controversial decision not to locate the new Pounds 550 million synchrotron project at Daresbury...
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Budget may bring good tidings for colleges
Next week's budget could bring rewards for universities and colleges as the government rolls out its plans for innovation and enterprise, perhaps with extra support for further education students....
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Group finds race bar starts in school
The UK produces virtually no home-grown black doctors or scientists, say education campaigners, writes Steve Farrar. Young black people have been effectively barred from pursuing a career in science...
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Plans to monitor first jobs attacked
Vice-chancellors have condemned new detailed instructions on collecting graduate employment data ordered by the government as over-prescriptive and bureaucratic. They say they have not been properly...
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Time to enter the next century
Britain's old universities are lagging behind the rest of the sector in their preparations for Curriculum 2000, college heads have warned. Annette Zera, principal of Tower Hamlets College, told a...
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Redundancy fear
Twelve of the 90 staff in the University of Central England's faculty of the built environment face redundancy because of falling student numbers and projected deficits, writes Harriet Swain....