Calculating the pensions pay-off
As an Association of University Teachers-appointed director of the Universities Superannuation Scheme, I have followed with interest recent exchanges in The THES on pensions. Sarah Oates (Letters,...
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Calculating the pensions pay-off
I am surprised that there appears to be so much misunderstanding as to USS pension benefits. I would indeed have been delighted on retirement 18 months ago to have received a tax-free, six-figure...
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Calculating the pensions pay-off
The USS offers a low-cost, totally risk-free, index-linked income in retirement - plus additional death in service benefits, dependants' pensions and ill-health provision. It can offer these benefits...
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Calculating the pensions pay-off
It is worth examining what befell many who retired with benefits from the Federated Superannuation Scheme for Universities. This was a defined-contribution scheme that was the forerunner of the USS....
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Put the books right
In reviewing my book, Environmental Democracy (THES, March 31), Fred Pearce claims that my discussion of human rights violations in Karen State, Burma relies exclusively on a single newspaper source...
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Put the books right
In Raphael Salkie's review of the Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics (THES, March 31), he appears to endorse uncritically the book's conclusion that research proves that "the formal...
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No jobs for the tongue-tied
The Nuffield inquiry has suggested that a foreign language should be a prerequisite for university study. Frank Burdett disagrees. Two days ago the Nuffield languages inquiry, chaired by Sir Trevor...
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Milosevic's son in shooting incident
Serbian authorities have blamed the pro-democracy student movement Odpor (Resistance) for allegedly shooting at a supporter of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic. Odpor's spokesmen, however, deny the...
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Why I ...welcome this week's report into clinical research in North Staffordshire
At last the United Kingdom has the prospect of a research ethics committee system that works. That is the main message I take from the report of the inquiry led by Rod Griffiths, director of public...
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Goodbye to Beowulf
Valentine Cunningham breathes a sigh of relief as Oxford finally scraps its compulsory Anglo-Saxon English course. Surely the walls of Jericho have fallen. Most sensationally, the Oxford University...
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Premier division unis
Universities clearly believe that football can reach the students a mere prospectus cannot touch. Last week, the diary reported Newcastle University's wheeze to attract Indonesian students by sending...
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Brummy royal flush
Is the University of Birmingham becoming a royalist enclave? Last month, it was the Princess Royal who paid a visit to the Midlands, to open the university's new sports pitches. Last week, 25 years...
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An offer you can't refuse
Recent focus group research that called the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals "remote" and "pompous" seems not only to have bred an inferiority complex but a determination to bring in the...
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Old rebels need a cause
Student rebels of the 1970s are hard to put down. One writes to the Warwick University student newspaper congratulating those who occupied Warwick's senate last term. Describing himself as a veteran...
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GLA's education voice
Whoever the political winners and losers of the Greater London Assembly elections may be, one winning profession is academia. Five of the 25 members of the London Assembly have university links,...