Taking the Mickey out
Sally Feldman on killing off 'soft option' media studies.
Sally Feldman on killing off 'soft option' media studies.
Despite its many detractors, the discipline does have a role in the country's universities.
Howard Dalton was a distinguished microbiologist who transformed the use of science at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs while quietly fundraising to help alleviate poverty in...
When counting an author's citations in Thomson's Web of Science (or Science Citation Index), it is instructive to search for Treatise on Natural Philosophy by Baron (Lord) Kelvin of Largs, William...
As custodians of a substantial amount of public funds, universities have a duty to demonstrate the achievement of value for money ("Whitehall seeks £1.5bn 'savings' from sector budgets", 17 January...
Is there no way of making jokes without bringing pedants out of the woodwork (Letters, 17 January)? The University of Sussex was known as "Brighton" for 20 years before Sir David Watson's outfit took...
In the week that we learnt of the worsening dentistry crisis in the National Health Service, the bestselling academic books in Sheffield were Integrated Dental Treatment Planning: A Case-Based...
It was disappointing that Alan Ryan wrote that "we propose to keep everyone at school until they are 18" ("Requiem for lost optimism", 10 January).There is no such proposal. There is a proposal to...
How many referees does it take to vouch adequately for a job applicant?One job advertised in ߣߣÊÓÆµ (Appointments, 17 February) requires six referees for an applicant at professorial...
It is a fair point that university libraries may be falling behind developments on the internet as researchers increasingly make use of new research behaviours ("Researchers' web use could make...
Several recent issues have covered the topic of business-facing universities, and last week was no exception ("Diversity challenge", 17 January). One indicator of how successful higher education...
Mao Zedong had a far better grasp of education than Zac Smartboy ("The Poppletonian", 17 February). Smartboy claims that "one doesn't need to eat the whole of an apple or a banana or a peach to...
The university exam system faces real problems. Academics are forced to mark too much too quickly. Coursework is contaminated with plagiarism. Fine-grain discrimination is impossible and mistakes are...
I use Hollywood films to give my language-acquisition students the opportunity to practise critical consumption. This hasn't always gone as planned.Some films get it right. Krakozhian-speaking Viktor...
Sometimes I even irritate myself in my demand for an answer to the question "where are the women?" when I see an article that offers the opinions of a string of academics.It's the complaint my...