If Germany has done it, why can’t we? That’s the question being asked by many students around the world in countries that charge tuition fees to university. Barbara Kehm explains how Germany reached this point, and whether it’s likely to stay there.
Will Davies responds to the calls for a social science shake-up by questioning the status of the social sciences in 2014 as something other than mere understudies to the natural sciences. The shared terrain of the two, he argues, seems to rest on various acts of forgetting on the part of the social sciences, but no acts of learning on the part of the natural sciences.
With one foot firmly planted in natural science and one in social science, Yale’s Nicholas A. Christakis looks at the landscape of the latter and wonders why it’s changed so little in the past century. Is it time for a common-sense, and yet radical, reshuffling of the institutional frameworks that we tend to accept as permanent?
There’s a rankings mania affecting institutions of higher education. But just because it’s a mania, does that make bad?
Awareness and prestige of universities is increasingly being driven by their exposure on online platforms. But what does that really mean? Fernando Rosell-Aguilar explores that question.
What might be the reductio ad absurdum of academic ranking? South Korea might offer a hint, as the ‘spec’ generation focuses on its monetizable skillset –sometimes to the exclusion of most anything else.
Given the rise of policies that try to link state appropriations for public universities to the student outcomes for those institutions, the natural question must be: do these funding policies correlate with higher student achievement? The answers may surprise …
Although this piece first posted at The Conversation was not intended as a response to Daniel Nehring’s request for opinions about effect of ranking-mania on academic labor, Alister Scott’s observations on the current state of British higher education do shine a light on one facet of the larger issues involved.
Congolese thinker, philosopher and linguist Valentin-Yves Mudimbe died on April 21, 2025 at the age of 83. He was in the US, […]
Christopher Jencks, known for his novel and inventive opinions on hot topic issues like income inequality, homelessness, and racial gaps in standardized […]
In recent years there has been an increased focus on how research papers and supplemental data can be preserved openly. Andy Tattersall, Liz Such, Joe Langley and Fiona Marshall argue equal attention should also be paid to curating communication outputs aimed at engaging non-academic audiences.
Are you a researcher with an idea that could help solve one of today’s most pressing problems? A conference in Dubai this […]
In recent years there has been an increased focus on how research papers and supplemental data can be preserved openly. Andy Tattersall, Liz Such, Joe Langley and Fiona Marshall argue equal attention should also be paid to curating communication outputs aimed at engaging non-academic audiences.
A new people has emerged in the digital age, that of ‘internet famous’ celebrities. And that new people has a class of […]
