FE colleges score but fail to win
When further education colleges were told, after incorporation, to hone their performance, few envisaged chasing so many moving goalposts. It must come as little comfort that their cheerleaders are...
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School report to government
Those of us with an interest in teacher training are nervously waiting to see what an incoming government might have in store for us. In the past decade reform has followed reform, more often, it...
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Doing the business on pay
University academic and academic-related staff look set, after the formalities of ballots, to accept the 5.8 per cent pay offer over two years. Students can breathe a sigh of relief as the threat of...
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A sledgehammer to crack a ridiculous nut
Labour's bid to ban the albeit indefensible claims that the Holocaust never happened is an attack on free speech, argues Jennie Bristow. Last week Labour MP Mike Gapes successfully introduced a...
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A fearless arbiter of competing interests
Christopher Kenyon, newly appointed chairman of the higher education quality agency, sets out his agenda. As the squeeze on higher education funding tightens inexorably with no foreseeable prospect...
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Organs: going cheap
J. C. Lester (THES, January 24) asks whether there is anything apart from anti-market prejudice that stands in the way of payments to persuade people to donate organs. There are quite a lot of...
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Rent a historian
What exactly does Marianne Elliott mean by saying that "the Irish landlord may have been largely rehabilitated by historians" (Books, THES, January 24)? What historians like W. E. Vaughan have shown...
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No leap involved
Guy Cook (THES, January 10) is totally mistaken in his claim that I make "a triumphalist QED leap" to assert "the victory of sociobiology over cultural determinism". I have always been an outspoken...
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Pull out calmly
We believe pensions should be taken very seriously. They are after all income which lecturers will rely on when their career ends. In response to Peter Koch's letter (THES, January 31) we are not...
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PRP? we don't want it
Your report of the plan by University College London to introduce an obsolescent profit-related pay scheme (THES, January 24) quotes the provost, Derek Roberts, as describing the Association of...
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Scotland, here I come
Should not your front-page headline "Research formula will reward elite" (THES, January 24) be rephrased as "Research formula will punish the successful"? First, there is the reliability of the 5*...
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Deriding Derrida
In his review of Derrida for Beginners (THES, January 31) Roy Harris betrays the effects of not taking continental philosophy seriously. He equates French academic criticism of Derrida with...
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Learning not leaning
Your report on the Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore (THES, January 3) gives the mistaken impression that it is a unique institution. This is not so. The Italian University and Scientific Research...
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Source of the spark
Your editorial comment "Keep the bright sparks burning" (THES, January 31) is to be applauded for its closing comment on the need for sparky people. However, such people are not just the product of...
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Cash crisis: not all bad
The modern university lecturer has to be an opportunist. The concept of students as autonomous learners is a good thing. Regretfully, higher education establishments of bygone, halcyon days failed to...