Opinion

For over a decade, the UK government has urged ‘challenger’ institutions to shake up the higher education status quo. But there is scant evidence of success

Why are so many on the identitarian left so quick to reduce differences of opinion to existential threats to marginalised groups, asks Umut Özkırımlı

The effective ban on any form of anti-Zionism or harsh criticism of Israel has had a detrimental impact on my life and career progression, says Clive Gabay

An ungrammatical term that re-genders professorship on retirement does nothing for the advancement of women in academia, says Wendy Dossett

Business development should be left to the schools and faculties that house the researchers and students whose ideas drive innovation, says Ben Clark

BJP ministers and supporters are largely limiting themselves to discrediting and suppressing evidence of government failings, says an academic

Our research suggests men still have a greater chance of attaining influential postions than women, say Zhengyang Bao and Difang Huang

Rationalising resources is the official reason for proposed mergers, but Albanian history suggests a darker motive, says Arjan Shahini

Academics should be aware of how cohorts are structured so they can enable students to better distribute their emotional labour, says Miriam Johnson

For university students, living matters as much as learning. Piling pressure on local private rental markets helps no one, says Lorna Fox O’Mahony

Affordable AI-powered writing software offers some hope to scholars unfairly criticised for their imperfect English, but more radical change is required, says Natalia Kucirkova

As university libraries invest heavily in digital resources, Caroline Ball explains why physical books are still vital for research, teaching and the preservation of knowledge

Academia and the armed forces may seem worlds apart, but officer training has valuable lessons for university managers, says former Indian army veteran-turned-professor Vikas Rai Bhatnagar

University educators may not fully understand generative AI or its long-term impact on society, but they must seek to integrate the technology into degree courses, says Stephanie Marshall

Litigation over lockdown-affected degrees has highlighted how unfair contracts favouring universities offer scant consumer protection to students, say David Palfreyman and Dennis Farrington

Revised freedom of speech guidelines are pushing universities to be both more active in heading off problems before they start, but also less political

Those with passionate convictions must be willing to concede their arguments may be flawed or even wrong if useful debate is to happen on campus, says UCL president Michael Spence

Departmental hierarchies, job precarity and institutions’ need to protect their star professors enables bullies to thrive in Britain’s top universities, says Wyn Evans

Remodelling engineering degrees to include rewilding and ecological restoration would benefit students, society and the planet, says Paul Jepson

Seven years after he took the ‘big leap’ out of academia, John Ankers explains what he’s learned from life coaching other scholars who are mulling a change of career

Faculty often feel they’re always on the job because of technology and the stress can stem from not feeling totally in control, writes Betheny Gross

If Stanford’s now-departed president had fully faced up to dubious practices in his lab and insisted on corrections, his infractions of research integrity could have been forgiven, says David Sanders

At the heart of the debate about the global competitiveness of EU-funded research is the question of whether science should be a tool for industrial policy or a global power for good, says Jan Palmowski

Limits on free speech, funding cuts and political appointments at public universities risk squandering a golden opportunity to create a thriving higher education system, says Saikat Majumdar

I’m externally funded to do research but I help colleagues by teaching on top. How can it be right to punish me for partial performance, asks Philip Moriarty

Every day that the prime minister delays further diminishes the UK’s reputation in Europe, says Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf

If AI can perform or simulate a competency being assessed, is it really appropriate for students to use it, asks Andrew West

The curricula of the most advanced science and technology subjects contain little space for moral and social insight, says Andy Miah

Reducing the number of universities in South Australia would fly in the face of the Universities Accord’s call for more differentiation, says Warren Bebbington

Debates about international student numbers are highly politicised. But the contribution they make is far more nuanced than any statistics allow

If A-level grades are only ‘reliable to one grade either way’, where does that leave admissions officers deciding on borderline cases, asks Dennis Sherwood

We must reform a science culture that sometimes seems to value impact and quantity over importance and quality, say Ferric Fang and Arturo Casadevall

Unless something is done, teaching and learning risks becoming a completely inauthentic spectacle, says Dan Sarofian-Butin

As attentions turn to manifestos for the coming election, higher education should ramp up communication with MPs and ministers, says Anne Milton

While domestic student numbers are declining, India’s vast underserved student cohort offer solutions for both nations, says Kyuseok Kim

The mutual suspicion of autonomous bureaucracies ignores the multifarious needs of living, learning, maturing young people, says Harvey Graff

There is an important place for such training, but it is markedly at odds with many of the established values of the university, says Ian Pace

The impact agenda has been kind to me, but its obsession with science and growth are huge flaws. Time to get out, says Rupert Read

Copying others’ work is theft and corrupts the literature. Concern for culprits’ welfare should not preclude punishment, says an academic

By distributing both credit and blame where it is due, initiatives such as CRediT can help deter research fraud, says Paul Ayris 

In the first of a series of articles charting the merger of the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide, the institutions’ vice-chancellors, David Lloyd and Peter Høj, set out why, after a series of false starts over the years, the amalgamation finally looks set to go ahead

It is easy to be consumed by the daily addressing of students’ needs but, for their sake, faculty need to hold the line, say Colleen Wynn and Elizabeth Ziff 

Research into changing patterns of biodiversity across the globe is vital, but it also matters how institutions manage their own land, says Sasha Roseneil

Jeopardising local universities with rhetoric about rip-off degrees is the last thing the UK needs. A new funding settlement is vital, says Martin Jones 

The fact that most graduates credit their professional success to their degrees is a neat counter to the government’s rip-off rhetoric, says Vivienne Stern

There is near-universal dismay among scientists over continued delays to UK association to Horizon Europe. It is time to replace bean-counting with vision

Once it becomes common knowledge that a UK master’s degree is worthless, the sector will be in trouble, says an anonymous academic

The new rules are welcome, but change will only truly occur if institutions finally get over their obsession with publications, says the Hidden REF committee

Our message is to hold the policy line. The levy has taken time to bed in, but it would be premature to tear it up and start again, say Chris Husbands and Natalie Day

Biden's debt forgiveness plan may have been blocked but everyone will suffer if graduates can't afford to spend, says F. King Alexander

Various methods exist to help students decide which courses will pay off, but all should be taken with a grain of salt, say David Levy and Harvey Graff

Permanent contracts, lighter workloads and higher salaries would boost the flagging prestige of Ukraine’s academy, says Alexander Kostyuk 

The interim report’s focus on engagement with Australian communities risks overlooking obligations to the rest of the world, says Craig Jeffrey

Working together to tackle specific teaching and research needs could seed high-quality research institutes, say Diya Dutt and Sudarshan Saha

Employers might find it easier to reach agreement with a less politically skewed membership body, says an anonymous academic 

It is proving difficult to accommodate even the fraction of South Sudanese students who have already made it back home, says Kuyok Abol Kuyok

Perhaps the EU could give additional assurances that it would apply corrections if the UK won significantly less funding than it put in, suggests Jan Palmowski

International students contribute nearly £12 billion a year to the government’s priority areas for levelling up, says James Pitman 

Former Oxford v-c Louise Richardson is wrong to dismiss the need for a free speech tsar in a massified system, says Ian Pace 

The government would do much better to help educational institutions understand and prepare for future labour market shifts, says Rosalind Gill