Higher Education Reform

Stern Review: The REF and the Damage Done
Academic Funding
August 1, 2016

Stern Review: The REF and the Damage Done

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If We Scrap Tenure, What Would Replace It?
Higher Education Reform
July 1, 2016

If We Scrap Tenure, What Would Replace It?

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Migrants Ate My Guinea Pig
Higher Education Reform
June 16, 2016

Migrants Ate My Guinea Pig

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Which University Rankings Should You Trust?
Higher Education Reform
May 26, 2016

Which University Rankings Should You Trust?

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The UK’s HE Landscape in the Wake of ‘Knowledge Economy’

The UK’s HE Landscape in the Wake of ‘Knowledge Economy’

The new government report ‘Succeeding as a Knowledge Economy’ takes forward most of the ideas about improving teaching at Britain institutions of higher education already found in a green paper published in November 2015. So what does this new report tell us about the future?

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Response to Nehring: What’s the Point of British Sociology?

Response to Nehring: What’s the Point of British Sociology?

Rebutting Daniel Nehring’s recent post asking if sociology still matters in Britain, Robert Dingwall responds that sociology does have a good story to tell about itself, even in the age of austerity.

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Does Sociology Still Matter in Britain?

Does Sociology Still Matter in Britain?

Daniel Nehring sees a fundamental contradiction between the critically engaged scholarship on social inequalities and power structures that British sociologists still produce and the thoroughly financialized, individualistic, and highly competitive organisational logics of the universities in which they work.

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Universities Need to Escape the Trap of Competition

Universities Need to Escape the Trap of Competition

There is a modern-day notion that competition will solve all problems, says Rajani Naidoo, and higher education can get trapped in a kind of magical thinking that makes a fetish out of competition.

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Major Study Asks, What Academic Subject Pays Best?

Major Study Asks, What Academic Subject Pays Best?

A new survey in England examines the career outcomes of recent university leavers. For maximum pay, it helps to be a student of economics — and to be male.

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REF 2014: Discipline Mattered in How Impact Calculated

REF 2014: Discipline Mattered in How Impact Calculated

A new report produced by the Digital Science team explores the types of evidence used to demonstrate impact in REF2014 and pulls together guidance from leading professionals on good practice.

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African Academics Prey to (Academic Journal) Predators

African Academics Prey to (Academic Journal) Predators

In the past few years there has been an insidious rise in predatory journals and publishers, notes Adele Thomas, and African academics have not been immune to their predation.

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Manufactured Controversy: Adam Perkins, the Psychological Imagination and the Marketing of Scholarship

Manufactured Controversy: Adam Perkins, the Psychological Imagination and the Marketing of Scholarship

The content of scholarly debates is increasingly secondary to the instrumentalization of scholarship in the promotion of one’s brand,” says our Daniel Nehring. It may not matter much that this brand is built on — academically at least — somewhat dubious welfare bashing, as long as the right markers of scholarly status are attached to it.

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