Teaching and learning

After a tumultuous 2022, what will the new year bring for higher education? Some of the UK sector’s respected crystal-ball gazers offer their predictions for 2023

With hostility from the Home Office over international student numbers, membership of Horizon Europe slipping away and heavy demands placed on institutions by regulators, UK university staff will be wondering how 2023 will play out. Patrick McGhee and Emma Rees read the runes

Students aiming for a Russell Group university were set up to fail by a pathways college – but then passed anyway, says Donald Short

Liberal arts programmes should be revamped and rebranded to emphasise the competencies they provide graduates entering the workplace, says Costas Spirou

Helping students create climate-conscious start-ups would enhance campus learning and universities’ green credentials, says Robert Phillips

Expanding the blended or online learning currently on offer will not be enough to achieve reskilling agenda, says Betty Vandenbosch

The emergence of ChatGPT underlines that keeping the status quo may be the beginning of the end for legal education, warns Mimi Zou

Growth of chapters seen in the 1990s has tailed off, and they are increasingly pushed towards the back

Some research presentations by practitioners are more akin to sales pitches than free enquiry, says Ian Pace

Professor known for statements widely perceived as racist has had low class sign-ups for several years, suggesting campus verdict ahead of formal sanction review

Shadow health secretary backing a Policy Exchange blueprint for growing doctor numbers, including the creation of up to 15 new medical schools

We need to prepare students to thrive in a world where they use AI but are not dependent on it, says Mike Groves

More than half of those polled by Hepi and NUS express support for education designed with employment in mind

Those forced to surrender their technology at the door show higher rates of comprehension and mindfulness, plus less anxiety

Faculty need to find ways of seizing back the control that’s been wrested from them in the past few decades, says Gayle Greene

The country’s cultural deference to authority means students lack the courage and the motivation to challenge current thinking, says Aus Abdulwahhab

Thousands of students participated in the Ucas survey on digital resources

Language Policy Framework seeks to integrate the country’s 11 official languages into higher education

President of Lebanese American University explains how refugee focus has made interdisciplinary courses more relevant and engaging

Shorter online lectures work better, says former World Bank higher education director Francisco Marmolejo

AI is close to being able to write students’ essays for them. But that will not help them understand why they think what they think, says Jane Rosenzweig

New university pathway meant to boost talent, but academics concerned over graduate retention

Technology will never be properly integrated into teaching if it is seen as separate from the physical classroom, says David Puttnam

Authors say Omani findings could help drive education reform

The police-catch-punish approach neglects to address plagiarists’ misunderstanding of what higher education is all about, says Sioux McKenna

Students at higher-ranked liberal arts colleges report strong relationships with their instructors – but rural institutions languish, says Samuel Abrams

The LLE is a useful first step towards a radical reform of the country’s narrow and inflexible higher education system, says Martin Rees 

Berkeley among institutions admitting it’s overwhelmed by freshers struggling in classes and low on resilience

Other suggestions to ease military skill shortages include funding future reservists’ studies and ‘opening up’ to international students

New subject guidance mandates ‘narrowly skewed perspective on the history of mathematics’, leading academics claim

Interdisciplinary degrees focused on sustainability challenges would excite undergraduates more than discipline-led courses, says KAUST president

Traditional view of educators as the authority in Chinese classrooms being challenged by changing attitudes, research finds

Handing out glitzy prizes is a cheaper way of shoring up morale than paying people better, says Bruce Macfarlane

Phasing out English would disadvantage graduates and hurt universities’ ability to draw international talent, scholars say

Improvements to students’ grades usually down to spending more time on tasks rather than ‘active learning’, says landmark study

Each university should define and proclaim its own mission, and then be measured against it, says Peter Main

South Korean study of more than 125,000 teacher evaluations shows learners’ tendency to penalise their lecturers even amid overall rise in scores

Inspectors cite concerns about housing quality and accessibility, but say higher first-year rates may simply be because students ‘do not feel at home’

United Nations report examines how academic credits can be validated more easily

But report concludes that balance of face-to-face and online learning is ‘not the key’ factor in teaching quality

As companies seek to supplant university courses, Nobelist fears policymakers blinded by promises of cheap and easy

America’s two-year public colleges are often romanticised as engines of social mobility and the epitome of the educative mission. But one academic has found the reality to be very different, with callous management failing students and staff in equal measure

A national curriculum relating to vital knowledge and skills could also help assure equal access to high-quality courses, says Ian Pace

The global picture is changing, as five countries enter the ranking for the first time – all of them in Africa. Rosa Ellis reports 

That the US leads on measures of teaching and learning environment is no surprise, but there are some unexpected names among the most rapidly improving countries

Academics must work closely with students to foster innovation, says KAUST president

‘If you are worried about the quality of online teaching, worry about the teaching part,’ says Clay Shirky

To find solutions to pressing problems, we must foster diverse voices by making the university a place to which anyone can belong, says Teruo Fujii

Scholars need to address how the legacy of Russian writers and artists is taught to students and the public, says Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

Researcher encourages universities to talk openly about Fomo and the risk it poses to young students

Universities must refocus on the basics of reading, writing and numeracy across subjects and fields, says Harvey Graff

Virtual exchanges and microcredentials off the table until rules are redrawn

Retaining Covid innovations seen as possible solution to dealing with backlog

Careful thought is required before Western art music is condemned and cast out, says James Olsen

Academic presses struggling to keep up with the demand for once-obscure books about war-torn nation

Higher education needs to ‘find the right balance’ between online and in-person learning, says Sydney professor, after confronting empty lecture hall for the second time

As a campus guard, George Bass often sees the gaps between students’ intellectual abilities and their life skills

Government accused of moving goalposts over pre-election messaging, with social sciences and business master’s also set to lose out

Academics’ passion for research should feed into the ideal higher education experience, says Gill Evans

OECD researchers offer evidence that students aren’t getting ‘generic skills’ needed for world of work – with potentially big implications