Head of school/department

Universities’ nominal control of undergraduate medical training belies the fractured reality, says Jonathan Rees

Universities are moving in the right direction, but they can and must go further and faster, says Alice Gast

This week’s Climate Exp0 underlines universities’ potential to make net zero achievable, say Emily Shuckburgh, Roberto Buizza and Alyssa Gilbert

Online exams are unfair and hard to police, even with creepy levels of invasiveness, says Helen Soteriou  

Collaborative, technically enhanced experiential learning will prepare the continent’s vast young population for the digital future, says Laura Kakon

Doing everything by the book makes it easy for opponents to plan ahead. So shake them up a bit, says Marcia Devlin

The professor of the history of medicine and author of Broken Dreams on teenage angst, exploring medical pasts and getting to the heart of midlife crises

Downgrading doctoral candidates to a master’s track raises questions about admissions and supervision standards, says Zhang Ruomei

The REF and TEF should be brought together, but adopting low-quality shortcuts would undermine the whole purpose, says Thom Brooks 

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

As the David Cameron furore underlines, lobbying is big business, fraught with risk. So why have universities shied away from it, asks Alberto Alemanno

An unfriendly and isolating ambience that descended into microaggressions and dismissed complaints shattered one academic's high expectations 

Tributes paid to visionary teacher of architecture who encouraged students to ‘dream wildly’

With some academics being willing to oust those they disagree with, self-censorship is a huge, unacknowledged problem, says James Tooley

The focus of research evaluation on papers and grants excludes far too many vital contributions. We must change that, says Simon Hettrick

Online teaching could have been much better if institutions had previously taken a communal approach to digital evolution, says Doug Specht

Restrictions are rare, but the Russell Group is putting its commitment to the open and rigorous contestation of ideas beyond doubt, says Tim Bradshaw

The UK has an ambitious R&D road map but the necessary steps must be taken by politicians and funding bodies, says Andrew Thompson

‘The first Black woman on the tenure track in theoretical cosmology’ tells Matthew Reisz about her struggles to reconcile a pristine childhood image of science with the reality she confronts by using selective citation to marginalise racist or sexist scientists

As UK campuses reopen, security staff are hard pressed policing social distancing and delivering toilet rolls to isolating students, says George Bass

Minor tweaks to repetitive tasks can free up hundreds of hours of academic time for better things, says Andy Grayson

Poor incentives and oversight mean too many doctoral supervisors are unqualified or negligent, say Mehvish Riaz and Muhammad Rizwan Riaz

Nearby communities are the priority – but impact is maximised via universities’ crucial global networks, says Dawn Freshwater

Research is for public benefit. The UK’s next deal with Elsevier must accelerate the abolition of journal paywalls, says Paul Boyle

Long-term public and economic health depends on empowering universities, businesses and health systems to work together, says Michael Spence

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities added to the scepticism but, done properly, training makes a difference, say Jules Holroyd and Jennifer Saul

A strategic rejection of digital instruction is akin to France’s short-sighted attempt to prevent invasion in the 1930s, says Robert Zaretsky

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Covid-19 have buried the idea that learning for learning’s sake is enough, says Nancy Gleason

Universities have decried the GCRF cuts, but being corralled into promoting justice globalism is not academic freedom, says Bruce Macfarlane

With overseas enrolments hitting the buffers during the pandemic, debate rages over whether higher education’s excessive reliance on this income stream is self-inflicted – and how universities can keep themselves on the financial rails in future. John Ross reports

Government concern has not yielded concrete steps to address chronic faculty shortages and adjunctification, says Pushkar

The use of the messaging app for cheating is apparently rife, bringing the whole viability of online exams into question, says Daniel Sokol

Healthcare education must re-evaluate the importance of learning academic values versus meeting competence measures, say four academics

The shortfall will damage the UK’s reputation and halt projects that are making a real difference to communities worldwide, says Joanna Newman

Universities must ensure that academics who contribute to the vast online encyclopedia are given the credit they deserve, says Piotr Konieczny

Amid the economic ravages inflicted by the coronavirus, the EU has agreed a huge stimulus package. But while research in some countries looks set for a transformational boost, it may be a different story for teaching

If writers aren’t held responsible for their words, they have no incentive to write reflectively and precisely, says Joe Moran

The circle can be squared via long-term projects conducted outside the regular timetable, says Lindy Elkins-Tanton

Events at the University of Leicester suggest an always tense relationship may be turning toxic, says Ursula Huws

Autocracy starts with the violent repression of students and academics, say Matteo Fumagalli, Achim Kemmerling, Youngmi Kim and Luicy Pedroza

Digitisation opens up a world of possibility but it doesn’t compensate for the loss of physical interaction, says Mark Griffin

Grim statistics on single-honours enrolments belie an explosion in joint-honours provision, says Katherine Astbury

Progress is being made but much still could and should to be done to boost women’s advancement, says Helen Bartlett

Putting the onus on students to maintain honour can be effective but it takes time to assimilate the mindset, says Sara Pervaiz Amjad

The pandemic has prompted dire predictions about international student enrolment at anglophone universities. But will those fears come to pass? Is there an alternative to standard international education? And how much do universities really spend on recruitment agents? Ellie Bothwell reports

Pakistan’s labour shortages illustrate that well-rounded graduates also need to be properly prepared for specific industries, says Tahir Shah

Why shouldn’t marketing staff have ongoing input into the brand perception they work so hard to cultivate among prospects, asks Victoria O’Malley

Sir Michael Barber’s blueprint can help digital delivery enhance learning rather than acting as an inconvenient stopgap, says David Puttnam

No institution will be able to make it alone amid the pandemic-induced tumult, so let’s make shared values the antidote to the crisis, says Ferruccio Resta

After her first book, The Entrepreneurial State, catapulted her into the academic stratosphere, the UCL economist has paused her audiences with senior politicians to write a follow-up that uses the Apollo moonshot as a model for a mission-based approach to social challenges

Until the pandemic forced teaching to go online almost overnight, universities were widely considered impervious to major change. But if one age-old practice can be flipped on its head, why not others? We ask six academics where they would direct their efforts first 

A national ‘great debate’ in England would be more effective than imposing free speech champions and threatening fines, says Dennis Hayes

Evidence shows that universities outside the golden triangle are among the best at creating successful companies, says Brian McCaul

Global university networks, enhanced by technology, will offer students more flexibility over where to study, says Youmin Xi

The discipline’s existence reflects an enduring Western belief in the inferiority of knowledge production specific to different cultures, says David Simon

Reduced tuition fees and more hardship scholarships would help those watching Zoom lectures while working on checkouts, says Barbara Franz

Universities’ wariness of online instruction was suddenly swept aside last year by Covid-19. But how successful has the overnight digital transition been? Is it sustainable? And should it be? Paul Jump runs through the results of our major survey of university staff

Like retailers, institutions must adapt to new circumstances by accelerating transformation or face long-term extinction, says Paul Baines

The unique skills that academics bring to local projects underline that they change lives well beyond the lecture theatre, says Zahir Irani

My student is right to wonder out loud why learning in college must be a forced march rather than a playful adventure, says Gregory Skutches