Head of school/department

This growing but still unacknowledged phenomenon in higher education is badly in need of ethical oversight, says an anonymous academic

A student’s mysterious accusation of racism saw P. K. Newby removed from her course – and another woman lost from the leaky pipeline

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

Tributes paid to founder of University of Warwick’s WMG

Negotiations on €100 billion Horizon Europe scheme delayed by East-West tensions and could be slowed further by European elections

Efforts to improve work-life balance must address the significant amounts of time that many scholars spend travelling, says Rachel Moss

German-Russian conference cancelled over inclusion of acting rector of V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University

Evidence from Canada highlights the scale of the challenge in preparing 21st-century workers and citizens, say Ross Finnie, Arthur Sweetman and Richard Mueller 

Narratives of decline fail to take account of the recent revival of the liberal arts in India, says Saikat Majumdar

As Brexit reaches fever pitch, who knows what damage the 2028 research excellence framework might reveal

Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests students want to spend more time at university, not less

Putting universities in ‘special measures’ or even abolishing degree classifications altogether should be on the table, says Geoffrey Alderman

Forcing academics on to teaching-only contracts based on flawed assessments of their research is ruining careers, an anonymous academic says 

It is inexcusable that some people graduate from UK universities without a basic command of mathematics or grammar, says John Warren

High-cost meritocracy à la française will cut little ice with discerning international students, says Juliette Torabian

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

Female-only professorships will speed progress to gender equality in the academy, but the pushback shows how far there still is to go, says Clare Kelly

Judgement is hard, but limits are appropriate if they ensure the quality of academic engagement with complex, competing ideas, says Sandro Galea

PhDs are becoming more programmatic in many countries, but the German one-on-one model retains considerable influence, says Glen Jones

If access to European research funding is to be maintained, more UK research universities need to forge formal links with EU institutions, says Peter Coveney

Pioneer of the genetics of hearing talks about how her research interests have been shaped by wine and music – and how she would cope with deafness

If businesses regard upskilling their middle managers as a high priority, universities should not be criticised for meeting that need, says Alec Cameron

Degrees focused on specific careers need be no less rigorous or innovative than other graduate qualifications, say Sandro Galea and Lisa Sullivan

Many retired academics embrace the freedom to fully embody their view of the serious scholar, says Bruce Macfarlane

Academia’s exacting standards on attribution are spot on. It is their inconsistent implementation that is the problem, says David Sanders

The research excellence framework’s reliance on hasty peer review by generalists limits sample size and accuracy, three academics argue

Research will suffer from the collapse of professional development into financially fixated assessments of ‘capability’, say Gill Evans and Dorothy Bishop 

Western universities must do much more to meet high-fee-paying Chinese students’ expectations, say Lena Langosch and Wilfred Dolfsma

University of Minnesota says 50 per cent outbound mobility goal ‘outgrew its usefulness’

The ease with which essays can be bought and the difficulty of grading them fairly means they should no longer be used for assessment, says Phil Race

Gender bias in the academy is all too real, but we should be just as wary of confirmation bias, says Terri Apter 

A failure to treat staff fairly and consistently impedes academic standards and hurts students, says Sheikh Nahid Neazy

A study of seemingly irrational romantic feelings reveals much about sexuality in 19th-century literature, finds Charlotte Jones

Patriarchy’s perpetuators; magical morphing gender; a physicist’s-eye view of the world; and what’s with all those buttons?

The mercury has fallen, but an alarming number of issues threaten to ignite and, potentially, give the UK sector some painful burns

There are reasons to be optimistic that we can start to know something about whether life exists elsewhere. But, says Charles Cockell, a more remarkable finding might be that we are exceptional

Book of the Week: Emma Rees on the key role of feelings in spurring individuals to political action

Peter J. Smith wishes the UK would adopt a US approach to making the Bard more accessible

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

Tributes paid to a leading African expert on heart disease

New president of German Rectors’ Conference thinks it is crucial that all students know the European canon

Guilt grew as green spaces became pleasurable more than productive places, says Lisa Hopkins

A Stoic history; influencers and other stars of the web; an English revolutionary; and chapter and verse on the books-artist nexus

Academic Jack Davis tells John Morgan of his surprise at learning that his history of the Gulf of Mexico had won a Pulitzer prize and his hope that it will help to deliver a pro-environmental message

The differences between Jesus and philosophers cannot be ignored, writes Robert Segal

A weekly look over the shoulders of our scholar-reviewers

University managers can learn from Geraint Thomas’ example that success can be won without having to be domineering and overbearing

Senior management has its perks but it also comes with a host of new practical, philosophical, psychological and even physical challenges. Here, seven people who have lived through that fiery baptism tell their tales

Some countries have introduced gender quotas, while many have reduced state control, report finds

Book of the week: Dream homes, women on the edge, murder – we’ve been here before, says Sharon Wheeler

Precarity is a significant feature of the academy worldwide, creating a feeling of ‘academic apartheid’ as it grows. Ellie Bothwell explores its impact

Lincoln Allison was inspired to teach by academics who loved what they did and communicated this to students. But has all passion for teaching been eliminated by creeping assessment and instrumentalism?

Sharif Mowlabocus reflects on how politics took a back seat as LGBTQ organisations advanced

Fees and fairness are at stake in UK HE’s global search for students, learns Aniko Horvath

Scotland’s first black professor talks about life as an immigrant, his experiences of racism and why ‘better science makes better’

Lord Sugar and Donald Trump may disagree, but kindness works best in higher education management, says Mike Thomas

Educators accusing students of not working hard enough is simply a shirking of their responsibility to actually meet learners’ needs, says Katherine Gould

The accounting magic the UK government performs to handle outstanding student loans has once again been questioned, but the timing couldn’t be worse for universities, says Andy Westwood 

Don’t believe the hype; Finnish universities face just as many problems with professional mismanagement and staff morale as those in other countries, says Gareth Rice

The entanglement of the university and tech worlds faces increased scrutiny following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Could joint positions in industry and academia offer a workable and ethically defensible way forward? David Matthews reports