The sound of leather on willow bowled over two scholars and enticed them away from their normal fields of study, writes Huw Richards. A political theorist and a materials scientist. A Russian-...
The credibility of science now rests with co-authors, who need to ensure that they check a paper's validity before it is published, says Robert Park. It has been the summer of lost faith. Each day...
Higher education has become a slave to its cold cash-monster master - in a humiliating and mutually unhealthy marriage, says Kenneth Minogue. There's an unmistakable touch of menace in the way Lord...
When you're lying on that beach in Belize congratulating yourself that as an ecotourist you're not damaging the environment and are helping the local economy, think again, says Rosaleen Duffy. When...
Disproportionate numbers of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain are diagnosed as mentally ill. Is the cause racial or environmental? Geoff Watts reports. The long-standing and deeply troubled relationship...
'Blogging' has drawn a 50,000-strong crowd for one moonlighting academic. Stephen Phillips finds out what it is and why it's perfect for the keen ranter. Glenn Reynolds finds himself much in demand...
Roger Lindsay participated in the essay-marking study purporting to demonstrate that academic assessment is a "lottery" (News, THES , June 28). He says the essays contained no coherent theory and...
The report on Stephen Whittle ("A right to be Mr and Mrs", THES , July 19), carefully avoided a number of problems and overstates the extent to which society has become more accepting of transsexuals...
The significant finding of the Virgin survey ("Students favour more tax to end fees and bring back grants", THES , July 26) is that more graduates are not securing meaningful long-term employment and...
Schools and universities planning to drop languages should consider that foreign companies need staff with knowledge of their tongues ("Languages come under threat", THES , July 12). Such graduates...
I am unsure how to catalogue the statement from the Department for Education and Skills (For the record, THES , July 26) that higher education applications are "a free market". Do I file it under the...
I've no idea who wrote "A Green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head", (First Impressions, THES , July 26) but can I suggest a competition to compose a limerick starting, "A...
Ruth Lea perpetuates the myth that universities have nothing to do with vocational education ("Best way to a plumb job", THES , July 26). But whether it is engineering, accountancy, biotechnology,...
It is good to hear that plumbers are exempt from the mass mobilisation into higher education. For a while it looked as though snatch squads would have to be sent in to media studies departments to...
You correctly reported that "many academics see the government stress on employabil-ity as invasive of higher education values and driving good learning out" ("Key-skills drive may put study in the...