UCU set to sue over workload burdens
Union is ready to take employers to court over long hours as levels of stress rise. Tony Tysome reports Union leaders warned this week that they are preparing to sue employers over excessive working...
Search
-
-
Who got that cash?
They say success begets more success. Ian Postlethwaite and his engineering team at Leicester University appeared to prove the point this week when Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, announced that...
-
Welsh maths institute recruiting in big numbers
A range of academic jobs are being generated by the new Wales Institute for Mathematical and Computational Science, writes Tony Tysome. The institute, a collaborative venture by Cardiff, Swansea,...
-
Institutions are too slow to tailor research to meet needs of industry
Universities in Europe may provide a "solid research base" but they are failing to extend this to research applications and technology transfer, according to a study for the European Universities...
-
Single form poses threat to diversity
Chicago is criticised for abandoning unique admissions process in favour of standard form, reports Jon Marcus The widespread adoption of a common application form by US universities has come under...
-
Television channel MTV
Television channel MTV has bought a popular website on which US students rate their professors, writes Jon Marcus. www.MyProfessors.com will join MTVu, a two-year-old closed-circuit university...
-
Red tape dogs French research
French companies benefit far less than they should from the results of public research, according to a confidential report commissioned by ministers. The conclusions were leaked to Le Monde . The...
-
Don't bet on reason to defeat Frankenbunny
The furore over potential cross-species research echoes vaccination fears of the 1800s, says Deborah Brunton A wave of monsters has invaded the newspapers: moo-tants and Frankenbunnies. These...
-
Ruth Scurr
"I know that he is guilty, that he is a villain, but even so, to cause a man to dieI!" According to his sister's memoirs, these words were spoken by Maximilien Robespierre before the French...
-
David Wilson: dulled by academe's verbal chloroform
One aspect of the bureaucratisation of higher education is the relentless use of clichés - words (and variants of them) once innocent but now to be dreaded. They epitomise the wooden, soulless and...
-
Parting gift
Peter Knight, the long-standing former vice-chancellor of UCE Birmingham, looks to have sabotaged his desk prior to his successor taking office. While new vice-chancellor David Tidmarsh was being...
-
Short and sweet, please
The Commons Science and Technology Select Committee appears to be fed up with getting long, unoriginal evidence - not to mention its ire that those submitting evidence steal the media spotlight by...
-
STFRC and STFC: leagues apart?
Months were spent agonising about what to call the new Swindon-based organisation that will be created when the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Central Laboratory of the...
-
Flash your credentials
Meanwhile, could another merger be on the cards? Glasgow Caledonian University is advertising for an executive director of finance. The advertisement informs applicants that "M&A exposure...
-
A thank-you shard
University College London really knows how to treat its staff well. One academic nearing retirement, but still with offers for future contracts in hand, received a package full of broken glass and a...