OU chief warns of internet hype
The heads of United Kingdom universities need to look up from their check-out tills and prepare for radical change by asking hard questions about their mission, values and purposes, according to Sir...
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Wanted - an angel flush with money
The path from scientist to entrepreneur rarely runs smooth, according to David Hall, director of the Thames Gateway Technology Centre at the University of East London's Docklands site. "A scientist...
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Research will not thrive without industry push
The well-found laboratory is the most hard-to-find laboratory in most universities. One recent spending initiative, the Joint Infrastructure Fund, brought in Pounds 800 million of first-rate...
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Linguasphere unites a thousand world voices
An online register of 21,000 languages provides a unique forum for linguists, writes David Dalby English is becoming so world dominant that increasing concern is being voiced in London and elsewhere...
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To win the global game, providers must pay to play
The World Education Market this week in Vancouver underlines the extent to which distance education and e-learning are now a global business, fuelled by desperation as traditional providers seek new...
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Bard, Beowulf and smart-arses
I agree with Jennifer Wallace (Soapbox, THES, May 19). Traditional exams in Shakespeare should be scrapped - and not only at Cambridge. Shakespeare should be reintegrated into his historical context...
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Bard, Beowulf and smart-arses
So Oxford University has finally decided to do away with compulsory Anglo-Saxon and the dreaded Beowulf (Soapbox, THES, May 12). Let me declare a lack of interest: I am not an English specialist, I...
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Bard, Beowulf and smart-arses
As a first-year Oxford undergraduate (admittedly a student of Valentine Cunningham), I am part of the last generation for whom Anglo-Saxon will be a compulsory part of the English course. What is so...
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Wages of sages
A few years ago, the civil service tried to hire me with a 30 per cent pay rise. I had been doing the job on secondment and found it less demanding than my academic post. If Sir Michael Bichard...
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Wages of sages
It was kind of Sir Michael Bichard to use his modestly remunerated position to comment on academic salaries. But one is always fascinated by the wider context of such comments. I wonder, for example...
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Catalogue of disaster
You suggest access to government records has improved since 1992 ("Pens poised, paper waits", THES, May 19). Until recently, after good access to Department for Education and Employment records for...
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Catalogue of disaster
It is distressing to read that papers are sitting in archives, effectively closed, because they have not yet been catalogued. One way round this could be to get librarian students on archival courses...
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Suspicious minds
Psychologist David Buss says "individuals diagnosed as 'pathologically jealous' often turn out to have partners who have strayed in the past, are straying or are contemplating straying" ("I love you...
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Up the minors
Geoff Watts's review of the Economic and Social Research Council "Children 5-16" programme ("Coping with mid-kid crises" , THES, May 19) was a useful reminder of the importance of children's own...
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On the trail of Down's
Down's syndrome diagnosis is changing. Clare Sansom looks at the latest techniques In the UK, about one baby in ten is born with some kind of abnormality. For most the defect is easily curable. But...