Social science

A lecturer describes how her university failed to act when she was racially victimised by a student receiving mental health support

Academics should consider whether they are comfortable giving top marks to students barely literate in English who submit work translated by Google, says Paul Stapleton

An independent service to check data and algorithms is the only way to resolve the research replication crisis, say Christophe Pérignon and Christophe Hurlin

Business and management schools are highly successful in financial terms, and provide valuable income to their wider universities. But opinion remains sharply divided on how successful they have been intellectually. Here, five business academics give their views on whether their discipline has done enough to earn the respect of the academy and wider society

All modern academics know that it’s publish or perish, but is regular publication a gateway or a barrier to groundbreaking scholarship? Simon Baker assesses the data on the relationship between research volume and quality and asks which, if either, should be prioritised

If academics want students to see value in course-based activities, we need to make clearer to them exactly what broader skills they will learn by completing them, says Tanya Martini

Gradual changes to lifestyles will not save the planet. Universities need to go beyond Cambridge's recent lead and think bigger, says Peter Harper

Consumerism, technology and the culture wars threaten to render critical thinking an unwanted skill, worries Victor Ferrall

Apparent moves to increase university autonomy will have the opposite effect given the government’s authoritarian tendencies, says Jarosław Płuciennik

Deep partnerships with government, business and civil society leave a sweet taste for both academics and the public, says Mark Western

Candid interviews with Chinese university presidents and government officials reveal widespread doubt that institutional freedom has increased

Big datasets linking higher education participation to a range of socio-economic factors are useful and fascinating, but their translation into policy remains fraught 

The advent of datasets linking graduates’ income to their student records has fuelled calls for certain courses and universities to be excluded from public funding. But, ahead of England’s Augar review of post-18 education, the minister who commissioned the longitudinal education outcomes project, David Willetts, warns against such abuses of the data

Robert MacIntosh considers how university staff should approach the management merry-go-round of vice-chancellors, pro vice-chancellors and department heads

Agreement that EU research funding should continue to be distributed according to quality is an important step forward, writes Jan Palmowski

Indian scholar explains why she thinks guidelines on ensuring PhDs focus on ‘national priorities’ are dangerous and wrong

If Americans lose faith in alternative routes to success, entry to top universities could become as cut-throat as it is in South Korea, says Stephanie K. Kim

Royal Statistical Society vice-president Guy Nason explains why it has taken the unusual step of reporting the Teaching Excellence Framework to the UK’s statistics watchdog

Difficult conversations about student complaints and colleagues’ underperformance will test the skills and judgement of senior academic staff, says Robert MacIntosh

Marketisation, precarity and global competition have combined to create a vast market for academic ghostwriting, says an anonymous scholar

Ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Selina Sutton explains what universities are doing wrong (and right) when supporting PhD candidates during pregnancy and beyond

Robert MacIntosh offers managers some hints on how to succeed at their university strategy day

Liberal arts professor Dan Mathewson uses his wrestling alter ego to explore the politics of the working-class American South

US government funding $7.6 million (£5.9 million) project designed to give policymakers a quick indication of reproducibility

England’s universities minister explains why the government is allowing universities to charge students more for condensed honours degrees

Researcher finds that impressive enrolment numbers conceal the tiny profit margins earned by UK universities operating abroad

Portland State University’s investigation of a researcher who published hoax papers misses the point of ethical oversight, says Jeffrey Flier

Survey of more than 5,000 UK researchers finds about half keep working when they are unwell

Generous philanthropic giving brings significant benefits to US universities but poses leadership challenges too, says Ángel Cabrera

Encouraging academics to spend time with scholars from outside their own discipline will be vital to tackling today’s grand challenges, says Annette Rubery

The Canadian government’s excessive policing of privacy makes it intolerably onerous to access its datasets, says Karen Robson

UK universities must cover soaring staff visa costs to mitigate the effects of the Home Office’s harmful policies, says Tristan Sturm

With Wales’ Coleg Harlech due to be sold this month, Sam Christie reflects on why ‘second-chance colleges’ have failed to thrive given their role in post-industrial communities

Today’s Office for National Statistics report will make challenging reading for the Augar review panel, but it must not resort to draconian cuts to student numbers, says Greg Walker

Latest remuneration figures bring prospect of more criticism for UK universities

Maintaining a breadth of curricular offerings is crucial if subjects outside the sciences are to retain their attraction in the digital age, says Dean Forbes

The furore over Brian Wansink’s data handling overlooks the fact that science should above all be about explanation, argues Martin Cohen

Analysis of impact of doctoral training centres funded by Economic and Social Research Council prompts further questions over approach to postgraduate learning

Major Ucea study finds ethnic minority staff suffer ‘significant pay penalties’ relative to white male staff with equivalent academic backgrounds

Political efforts to silence academic critics are unlikely to end despite clarification that universities are not obliged to ban them, says Pushkar

The international stars in the Boston Red Sox and the city’s stellar universities highlight why Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric is so out of step with a ‘winning’ part of America, writes Jack Grove from Boston

Simon Baker weighs the evidence for the transformation of the country’s higher education system

After a rare, chance encounter with an enthusiast for one of his books, Felipe Fernández-Armesto reflects on why so few academics gain any sort of celebrity 

The University of South Australia’s merger with its prestigious Adelaide neighbour may be off, but the fact that it was even considered illustrates how much can change in 30 years, says Adam Graycar

Academics should not be afraid to challenge the wisdom of requiring institutions to make financial amends for their past links to slavery, says Robert Dingwall

Donald Trump’s election prompted US scientific leaders to get more of their own into public office. However, as the midterm elections loom, progress on bringing analytical skills into the political arena looks like being very slow, writes Paul Basken

While widening access is high on universities’ agendas at undergraduate level, class barriers still prevail in the academy. Here, five working-class scholars describe their experiences of ‘otherness’

The withdrawal of funding for Ontario’s basic income pilot highlights the perils of working on politically funded research, says Evelyn Forget

Find out which institutions are best in the world for social sciences, business and economics, education and law

THE data show that Russia’s research influence in social sciences is waning, while other nations are failing to progress

New rules requiring a female presence on doctoral defence panels at the University of Glasgow will push more ‘unrewarded’ academic tasks on to women, critics claim

Lawyer of former university president imprisoned in Turkey gives glimpse into courtroom practices faced by persecuted academics

New pilot phase of post-Brexit immigration plans will prioritise applications from European Union staff working in higher education

The elaborate prank that saw spoof papers accepted by social science journals reveals more about the hoaxers’ politics than the shortcomings of ‘grievance studies’, says Alison Phipps

An openness and willingness to question oneself are the foundations of democracy and should be defended robustly, argues Michael Ignatieff, president of Hungary’s Central European University, in a new book

Sociology, once a discipline seen as the embodiment of social progress, is now subject to frequent scepticism over its methodology, politics and career relevance. Here, five sociologists offer their assessment of the challenges facing the subject and what the future holds

Right-wing intellectuals who fetishise ‘facts’ frustrate rather than further intellectual debate, says Ryan Coogan

Durham University has cleverly positioned itself as the ‘Harry Potter university’ to attract Chinese students, says Madeleine Ferrar

Research reveals how the new Longitudinal Education Outcomes data on graduate earnings give a misleading view of graduate earnings and value for money, says Gordon McKenzie

Human beings’ need for religion goes far beyond the management of emotions, says Ursula King