Laurie Taylor Column
At this time of year, The THES traditionally invites a number of key individuals and organisations in higher education to send their personal new year greetings. From UUK (Universities UK) Happy new...
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Leader: Fairness and clarity are key to viable reform
New years are meant to begin with a burst of optimism and an appetite for change. In 2003, the optimism may be tempered with caution, but no one in higher education should be taken by surprise at the...
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US cellist has some tips for British social harmony
Brown gets it right, Blair and Hodge don't. In giving help to the less fortunate, unsentimental respect is preferable to patronising pity, argues LSE sociologist Richard Sennett. He talks to Laurie...
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He who cares wins
Terry Philpot meets the ex-priest, father of two and foster father of 40 who has landed the UK's top social care job. The Social Care Institute for Excellence, set up by the government to evaluate...
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How does an expert join the ranks of the fame academy?
Over the past year, academia mourned the loss of some of its most high-profile public figures. Harriet Swain asks publishers and agents who will fill their shoes and what is needed to make a scholar...
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Intellect thrives on diet rich in research
Ominous noises coming from the government are suggesting that the teaching and research link should be severed. That would be a big mistake, says Alan Jenkins. The 1963 Robbins report greeted an...
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The student purse can save us from the mediocre
Data from US universities appear to show that higher tuition fees translate into better teaching provision, say Peter Andras and Bruce Charlton. The news is full of discussion concerning the cost and...
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Best intellectual reads of 2002
A dozen of The THES's contributors nominate their favourite books of last year. Helen Davies reports. Philip Anderson , Nobel laureate, professor of theoretical physics, Princeton University, US If I...
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Why we need an academic council 1
The Mona Baker affair has produced two victims and one casualty - but none carries the name "Baker". The victims are the two academics Baker dismissed from her editorial board because they are...
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Why we need an academic council 2
Oren Yiftachel's problem in submitting his research paper to the journal Political Geography ("Student unions reject academic boycott of Israel", THES , December 20/) illustrates the indiscriminate...
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Why we need an academic council 3
Why are the National Union of Students and the Socialist Worker Student Society so selective about whom they boycott? There are poorly treated nationals in many countries but we hear of no similar...
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Fleming's faith
John Waller writes that by 1930 Alexander Fleming's early optimism in the clinical potential of penicillin had gone (Letters, THES , December 20/). This is not true. Many former St Mary's medical...
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Anti-hooligan rebel
It is a bit rich to describe me as a "vociferous anti-moderniser" ("Cambridge rebels hold up rejig", THES , December 13). The outgoing administration ran up an eight-figure deficit. It tried to...
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In service 1
There is a major weakness in Roger Waterhouse's contention that education is "just another service industry" (Soapbox, THES , December 20/). No normal service industry depends for its success on the...
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In service 2
I was one of those customers referred to by Roger Waterhouse. As a paying student, the basics and image were as important to me as the support. What I encountered were two-hour lectures with little...