The founding of The Times Higher Education Supplement in 1971 ushered in a sense of a coherent higher education community and launched the careers of many celebrated journalists. To mark what is now THE’s 55th anniversary, Matthew Reisz speaks to many of them – and hears about backstreet boozers, Hawaiian blizzards and living in ‘a constant ambience of fart’

The focus on the individual benefits of university is, unsurprisingly, not playing well with those who do not go. Sector advocates need to work harder, in an ideologically hostile climate, to illustrate the benefits skilled workers confer on the whole of society, say Stephen Handel and Eileen Strempel