Higher education

A utilitarian approach to undergraduate education is leading to disenchantment among students and society. It is time to put ‘play’ at the heart of learning, says Colm O’Shea

Academics should not feel uncomfortable when their courses become increasingly focused on improving graduate outcomes, says Patrick Callaghan

Student data must be used more effectively to personalise courses, encourage engagement and identify at-risk undergraduates, says Iain Sloan

Dealing with the death of a family member is never easy, but does academic life present further complications and difficulties? Three academics at different stages of their careers tell their stories

Star professors who abuse their positions escape censure because universities fear hit to reputations and funding, says union report

Emma Rees is impressed by a disturbing study of how universities largely fail to address their employees’ grievances

Saikat Majumdar surveys developments from the Gulf to South Korea in light of the closure of Yale-NUS College

Linsey McGoey applauds a bold account of the ‘dark money’ fuelling the culture wars on campus

From undergraduate engagement to teacher training and graduate salaries, universities lack statistics needed to track student outcomes, say Hamish Coates and Xi Gao

University libraries are changing in major ways, but there are important lessons to be learned from the past, argues author of new book

Basing offers on actual results, uniformly adjusted for previous educational disadvantage, would be more transparent and just, says Quintin McKellar

‘Dedicated and inspirational’ teacher had expertise that was recognised all over the world

Manipulating assessment to generate equal outcomes sabotages an engine of fairness in a meritocratic society, says Glenn Fulcher

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Johann N. Neem enjoys a sharp historical analysis of why the humanities always seem to be overpromising on what they can do

Keeping going through the pandemic has proved a huge challenge for many working in universities. Being asked to present a story involving an abused child proved a step too far for Rachel O’Donnell

Educators now accept that digital tools are neither inapplicable to educational settings nor incompatible with sector values, says Jo Johnson

It is 2041. Knee-jerk politics is conspicuous by its absence and students are willing to actually hear each other. But is this odd spectacle a premonition or just a dream, wonders Jonathan Zimmerman

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers 

As we emerge from the pandemic, we can expect to see a new range of online and blended options, says Mark Stevenson

A look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Universities need to establish clear and transparent criteria for assessing those with borderline results, argues Andy Grayson

Major scientific breakthroughs require people to be in their labs well beyond nine to five, and we ought to acknowledge this openly, suggests Eneli Kindsiko

China-born academics now make up the largest cohort of foreign scholars in Japan, followed by Americans, Koreans and Britons

Making campuses sustainable will help limit future climate change but won’t protect against current threats, say Frank Fernandez and Hilary Coulson

What strikes some as a tedious chore prone to bias can transform lives and evoke enduring gratitude. Academics should embrace the opportunity to knit the plot of a person, says Douglas Dowland

Churches’ grip on former religious teacher training colleges is incompatible with their remit as publicly funded universities, says Keith Sharpe

Limited fluency and cultural concerns could lead to a backlash against German institutions’ pitch to the international market, says Brian Bloch

It was crucial for East Asian universities to put on more courses in English, but now they need to rethink their pedagogy, says Benjamin Tak Yuen Chan

David A. Sanders enjoys a vivid account of the many crafty ways academics steal the words of others

Deborah D. Rogers learns how the privileged make college admissions processes work in their favour

Efforts to improve access and promote diversity are often undermined by assumptions that they are at odds with ‘excellence’ and academic freedom. Drawing on her experiences all the way from Iran to California, Pardis Mahdavi explains how we can and must do better

The pandemic brought out the best in teaching staff in many universities. Yet countervailing forces are stamping out their creativity, warns Andy Farnell

At a time when marketised models are dominant, we must build on initiatives that put the stress on social justice and community engagement, says Peter Mayo

Spaniards and Poles notably buck the trends found in other countries

Gabriel Paquette enjoys a bold attempt to offer solutions for universities threatened by shrinking student numbers and declining revenues

Universities should urge their students to behave better but also must consider how they may enable abuse, argue Columbia professors

The Turing mobility scheme is a poor substitute for Erasmus+ but UK universities must learn to love it or it will soon crumble, says Marcus Dowse

The tired stereotype of the unworldly scholar has often been used to justify giving excessive influence over university management to businesspeople and administrators. There is ample evidence that this is a recipe for disaster, argues Terence Kealey

New research shows that inadequate oversight is leaving institutions dangerously exposed, says Andrew Kakabadse

Universities are now committed to ‘celebrating success’ and to treating every failure as just a stepping stone on the way to further success. Yet this, argues Joe Moran, is a betrayal of what really matters in the academy

David Willetts welcomes a bold account of how the battle between democracy and meritocracy has transformed higher education in the UK

If these unique institutions can become more inclusive, issue-oriented and multidisciplinary, their graduates will be equipped to tackle the 21st century’s multiple crises, say Steven Volk and Beth Benedix

When teachers ignore offensive language, we are complicit in making the classroom unsafe, say Mariangela Palladino and Shalini Sharma

The American political commentator offers John Morgan his trenchant views on Ivy League solidarity, why the left misunderstands populism and the ‘smugness’ of the ‘well-graduated’

Mark Erickson applauds an analysis of where higher education in the US and beyond has gone wrong

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg has doubts about the wider applicability of the ideas of an innovative university president

The readers’ editors employed by some quality newspapers offer a model for how to protect and promote universities’ core values, argues Priya Rajasekar

Stricter political and administrative controls on what can be said have led to the creation of a pioneering ‘free university’, say Katarzyna Kaczmarska and Dmitry Dubrovsky

David McClough reflects on whether higher education should take to the morally higher ground

Universities and their values have been hugely successful in forging a central place for themselves at the heart of the information age. David John Frank and John W. Meyer consider how and why the pandemic might be putting that at risk

Nick Hillman assesses the arguments for and against banning certain speakers from campuses

New intervention by the Copyright Licensing Agency may offer hope to universities struggling to access essential texts

Deborah Gabriel also calls for imposition of financial penalties on universities that fail to tackle pay gaps

Erin Hatton draws on an ‘odious comparison’ to illuminate the extraordinary powers coaches and supervisors can wield over their students

As most universities digitise all their teaching, they are finding it very difficult to deliver education online. Gorgi Krlev offers three challenges to conventional wisdom

Higher education, like many fields in the social sciences, will end up with a wealth of comparative data, scholar says

The Covid-19 pandemic offers universities a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put their dysfunctional strategies behind them, argue Timothy Devinney and Grahame Dowling

As the tools of complexity theory prove crucial in responding to the pandemic, they must be taught far more widely in universities, argues former oil executive turned researcher

Many universities are setting up ‘consent courses’ to reduce sexual assault and harassment on campus. Helen Lock attends one and considers a variety of views about their value and limitations