Race for business experts

UK business schools this week demonstrated their seemingly insatiable appetite for new staff with no fewer than six different universities advertising academic posts.

The universities of Hull, Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool, Lincoln and Queen Mary, University of London are advertising for staff in the pages of this week's Times Higher .

Hull University Business School is advertising for a professor, six lecturers, one fellow and a postdoctoral researcher, and is offering three PhD studentships.

Bristol seeks four professors plus four lecturers, three full-time and one part-time. Nottingham is advertising for a chair in accounting. Liverpool is looking for a dean for its Management School. Lincoln Business School is looking for a research fellow while Queen Mary wants three professors.

Jonathan Slack, chief executive of the Association of Business Schools, said demand remained high because of buoyant student recruitment and the fact that business schools weRe replacing staff who started lecturing during the rapid expansion of the 1980s and who were now retiring. He said: "It's not just a UK phenomenon. A lot of the new students are coming from overseas as are a significant number of the staff."

One in seven higher education students studies business and/or management.