Head of school/department

Arriving from outside academia means UK Research and Innovation’s new chief executive is more willing to take unorthodox but correct strategic decisions, say scientists

It’s been a bleak year as war brought more pain to a world still shaken by the pandemic and other pressures. Universities will be glad to put it behind them

Traditional metrics neglect the systematic barriers faced by individuals with various oppressed axes of identity, says Shan-Jan Sarah Liu

Universities’ intellectual property is seen as key to successful knowledge economies. But what is the best way to turn ideas into marketable products? Is it realistic to expect major commercial success? And how much of a stake should universities take in the process – and the proceeds? Jack Grove reports

Emilia Şercan has exposed a vast array of senior public officials for plagiarising their theses, writes Július Kravjar

Universities have a duty to protect students from the power imbalance inherent in a personal relationship with a staff member, says Cara Aitchison

Senior university staff must take responsibility for improving organisational approaches to and understandings of harassment, says Liz Jackson

Offering the opportunity to iteratively paraphrase copied content to lower similarity scores is nothing to do with education, says Július Kravjar

The grip of Silicon Valley on commerce and culture is huge and ever-growing. But as concerns mount about tech firms’ ethics, is there anything that universities – with vastly lower research and salary budgets – can do to put them on a more responsible trajectory? Four experts give their views

The Bourne films had it right. ‘Look at us. Look at what they make you give,’ says Donald Earl Collins

A scandal over unfair appointments of lecturers to the civil service should spark a broader pushback against nepotism, says Fistra Janrio Tandirerung 

In new role, Bill Rammell seeks to boost international ties, resist nepotism and push beyond pockets of excellence

Marketing students in business schools increasingly demand to be taught to use audio-visual software, says Emmanuel Mogaji

Border restrictions, differing national Covid strategies and changing demographics have all made significant impacts on overseas recruitment over the past two years. Simon Baker examines the latest data from five major recruiting nations and considers what they might presage for the future

Universities in non-anglophone nations should limit teaching in English and offer English support to students and academics, says Rosemary Salomone

Random selection from a gender-equal shortlist of qualified candidates would remove the effects of implicit bias, says Nathan Burke

Removing Amy Wax from compulsory courses or revoking her named chair would not contravene her academic rights, says Daniel Carpenter

A ban on abortion clinics’ use of university-affiliated doctors is a barefaced interference in universities’ hiring decisions, says Edward Halperin

The publication of three Nature papers demonstrates that money is no substitute for good ideas, open science and collaboration, says Andrea Morello

Higher education must acknowledge the extra workload that comes with higher education in the digital era, says Christopher Schaberg

Without it, we could lose sight of the subtleties of the sliding scale of disadvantage and its impact on participation, says Jayne Taylor

Higher education must double down on the liberal education values of interdisciplinarity, experiential learning and critical thinking, says Eric Skipper

Robbert Dijkgraaf's appointment to the Netherlands’ new government has got academics very excited, says Michèle Wera

The pandemic may just push US colleges and universities to do what they should have done a long time ago: reorganise, says Michael Hadjiargyrou

Teaching modules intensively, rather than in parallel, has had positive results at the handful of institutions that have tried it. But would it work for all students and all subjects? And would academics trade autonomy in course design for more research time? Anna McKie reports

University of the People aims to fund 4,000 Afghans to study, with 600 already enrolled in its courses

The escalating pressures of university life are resulting in all manner of exotic new psychological disorders. Adrian Furnham opens his casebook

As the season of goodwill comes around again, warm words about collegiality and fellowship have been dutifully corralled into all-staff missives from university leaders. But in an era of management, metrics and industrial unrest, does the image of the academy as a commonwealth of scholars still bear scrutiny? Seven academics have their say 

Unclear guidelines, screen-tanned conspiracy theorists and government party animals: none of them is helping campus security, says George Bass

Persuasion is everywhere, but universities could do a public service by communicating the messy, uncertain truth more widely, says Michael Blastland

They helped create the problems we face. Now business schools should be fundamentally reimagined as democratic institutions, says Carl Rhodes

The Florida governor’s control over the make-up of public universities’ boards makes recent controversies unsurprising, says Mei Lan Frame

Emily Shuckburgh and Alyssa Gilbert, co-chairs of the COP26 Universities Network, draw the lessons from two years of collective effort

A push to end the habit of assessing researchers by their publication metrics is gaining momentum. But are journal impact factors really as meaningless as is claimed? And will requiring scientists to describe their various contributions really improve fairness and rigour – or just bureaucracy? Jack Grove reports

Scrutiny of graduate outcomes is appropriate but the issue is much more complex than arts v science, says Anna Vignoles

Scholars defend Sergey Zuev’s ‘impeccable reputation’ and liken his treatment to torture

Both dropout rates and attainment have held steady since Abertay radically reduced entry grades for disadvantaged applicants, says Nigel Seaton

The UK’s whole-genome sequencing project could spark a global step change in the treatment of rare diseases, says Damian Smedley

Peter Osborne is intrigued by an account of the political and philosophical ideas that shaped the West German left

Both industry and academia in New Zealand need people who can look past traditional subject boundaries, says Catherine Whitby

Research that is neither rigorous nor insightful serves no one, say Stefan Stremersch, Nuno Camacho and Russell Winer

Meeting the Confucian approach halfway will protect student recruitment and might even stimulate a new politics of mutual benefit, says Paul Breen

New Zealand’s embrace of Māori vocabulary goes hand-in-hand with the incorporation of Māori understandings into curricula. But is a debate about the unintended consequences of this move being stifled by fear of speaking out? John Ross reports

Quite apart from the injustice, institutions that fail to act on complaints undermine trust across entire disciplines, says Irina Dumitrescu

The crisis in peer reviewing can be overcome if journals and universities do more to incentivise it, say Dirk Lindebaum and Peter Jordan

Inequality, Covid exhaustion, sympathy for students, fear of public opinion and frustration with UCU tactics are all factors, says Glen O’Hara

The brain drain from academia to industry is just one of the glitches that need addressing, says Greg Slabaugh

Graduation days are students’ days. Why can’t they be all-singing and all-dancing, asks James Derounian

Emphasis on student earning outcomes risks overlooking the bigger picture, say academics

The UK government’s £300 million funding pledge must be confirmed in the spending review, and departmental closures must stop, says Jon Keating

Despite their above-average employability, engineering students are hampered by poor-quality provision, says Pushkar

The pandemic revealed that in-person teaching generates greater satisfaction and sense of belonging, say Leonard Saxe and Graham Wright

The targeting such researchers face raises serious questions about universities’ moral responsibilities towards them, say five researchers

The David Miller and Kathleen Stock cases underline the growing threat to human rights, say Alison Assiter and Miriam David

With contention about diversity adding to concerns about employability and declining student numbers, does Classics in the US need rebranding or rethinking? Paul Basken reports

Universities must give credit for the broadened skill sets that the pandemic has prompted academics to acquire, says John Tregoning

In the absence of an express prohibition of class discrimination, a new code offers a beginning for dialogue, says Geraldine Van Bueren

The tactful approach can be effective but it risks obscuring the necessity and urgency of improvements, says Chris Moore

The Covid-enforced pause to in-person visits has been a relief to BAME academics, says Aymen Idris

Schools should be hubs of interdisciplinarity, co-producing research and solutions with key stakeholder groups, says Ansgar Richter