As you would expect there are some wise words in these 5 rules for the coming year from @alexusherhesa.bsky.social (and most of the Canada specific stuff translates to the UK) higheredstrategy.com/five-rules-f...
Associate Prof, Heriot-Watt Uni, learning & teaching enhancement, assessment & feedback, educational development
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As you would expect there are some wise words in these 5 rules for the coming year from @alexusherhesa.bsky.social (and most of the Canada specific stuff translates to the UK) higheredstrategy.com/five-rules-f...
đ¨New Research đ¨ Ahead of the release of Wave 30 of the BES Internet Panel, the team has examined Labour's decline since the 2024 GE. Labour's support has splintered into mostly indecision or left-liberal parties, but they've also lost their few right-wing voters. đ§ľâŹď¸ tinyurl.com/3m62exph
Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):
Interesting read by @carlessdavid.bsky.social (2025) Feedback Literacy Concepts and Practices: Toward Academic Feedback Literacy, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 57:5, 5-11, DOI: 10.1080/00091383.2025.2539038
Sailboat - 1900 https://botfrens.com/collections/173/contents/3105350
The extremist thugs who have carried out this attack are currently boasting that they have done so because they support a "tolerant" society. Not the sharpest tools in the box, it seems.
My guess: No, it would be a government bailout and de facto takeover, just like Dundee. If it happens in England, it will be a major moment in the way the government thinks about HE as a political liability
A hundred years ago, a new technology was going to eliminate the physical teacher: radio. We have heard it all beforeâŚ
Opposition: if elected, we will create the Torment Nexus Government: our opponents are simply not up to the logistical challenge required to create the Torment Nexus and their plans arenât even costed Media: Hereâs how the Torment Nexus might just work
If I were Labour Prime Minister, I would simply criticise the bloke pushing mass deportations.
FULL MOVIE HERE: youtu.be/On7EKdF_hNs
@gralefrit.bsky.social You have to see these! A friend of mine has been collating a series of images entitled "Things my students have written turned into Philomena Cunk quotes" and they're just glorious.
It is a problem that the BBC politics team believe themselves to be nerds and observably are not, they're just gossips.
Anyone know what time Tinderbox Britain is due to descend into terrible civil war? Just wondering if we still need sandwiches for tea.
Quite. People's revealed behaviour is usually at odds with their professed preference for the past...
This is brilliantly forensic and spot on about the different experiences by generation in terms of access to income vs access to wealth in the UK.
The cuts of 1981 were, arguably, more severe than those faced by universities now. The funding structure and scale of the sector is, of course, very different. But the survival and subsequent success of those HEIs hardest hit in the 80s does provide some grounds for optimism for the future.
17. Writing is an amazing thing. Itâs mad I can pick up a book on my shelf and hear the voice of someone 100, 200, 2000 years dead. Itâs an everyday miracle.
16. The best way, maybe the only way, to really figure out what you think about something is to write about it. The writing may not come off (most writing doesnât, at least first time) but youâll have clearer thoughts anyway.
1/ An observation about expanding higher education access. Pretty much everywhere in the world, expansion of access has been accompanied by a decline in status of HE institutions. Because, bluntly, if HE access is close to universal why should govts treat unis differrently than secondary schools?
Here's the killer quote from the 2023 Dieter Helm piece
He's one of Britain's richest men. So why does Asif Aziz's property company keep leasing London gift shops to overseas students based in abandoned offices or flytipped car parks â before vanishing without paying millions of pounds in taxes? www.londoncentric.media/p/asf-aziz-l...
Learned how to post scenes from Hal Hartley movies, so that'll be how I communicate now.
"What was supposed to be a night of music and joy turned into a deeply personal mistake playing out on a very public stage."
Just one chart from the @metoffice.gov.uk State of the UK climate report published today. We get used to focusing on the record highs and how 35C has gone from being rare to routine. But just look at all those summers which never got to 30C even in my lifetime. Itâs a different UK now.
Want to do a PhD with #CRADLEDeakin? Applications now open for 2026. More info at the link below đ blogs.deakin.edu.au/cradle/apply...
Terrific thread by Jonathan this. Since I was born, the area I grew up in has higher employment, has got older, has got healthier, became more likely to be in the private rented sector, got less religious, got less white. There is no non-bigoted reason to think the last of those is problematic.
If bazball was a person
Last week I figured out what ChatGPT was invented for: to please university bureaucracies. Had to write 2 module outlines for a new MSc degree; for one of them I let ChatGPT write the "intended learning outcomes" while for the other I did them myself. My own ones I had to redo. AI ones aced it.
I am probably quite unusual in preferring to write for non-academic audiences. Love the advice 'write to be understood not admired'
One common feature which might be called âpopulistâ linking the Greens and Reform is the rhetoric of âyou can all have nice things and someone else will pay for itâ.
I'm old enough to remember when the Prime Minister felt it was important to give us a running commentary of his thoughts on the entire Glastonbury lineup
MW is undoubtedly correct in his assessment of the UKâs poor economic growth and its failure to confront / accept that problem as being fundamental to the UK malaise. Iâm less sure though about aspects of his charlatanism / timidity framing. www.ft.com/content/8a49...
Iâve always thought the unionâs attacks on high salaries were wrong-headed. Smacks too much of right wing attacks on public service generally and top salaries are in no way responsible for the sectorâs issues. The problem isnât gravy, itâs starvation.
Quite odd among the current AI energy use moral panic that everyoneâs just stopped talking about the amount of energy streaming uses, which is (1) much more than generative AI, and (2) was itself the subject of endless headlines until something new came along.
Shamelessly replugging this from two years ago. We would never look at the proportion of, say, schools, that don't turn out literate pupils and go 'oh well, probably those kids were better off out of it'. We shouldn't view the short tail of bad courses and/or outcomes any differently:
Heard the first sensible thing about self-driving cars yesterday. Itâs not enough to pack technology into cars because the outside world is too unpredictable. Each city needs an electronic infrastructure analogous to air traffic control to make it work at scale.
University president resigns as it appears to be clear that government wants him to leave. State governments have done this before, but this assault on academic freedom is a departure for the federal government. news.virginia.edu/content/uva-...
One of Starmer's better attributes is that he admits to, and learns, from mistakes. But he needs to stop making so many in the first place. And as I argued at the time (see below), the problem wasn't just one accidental phrase; it was the whole speech. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
I mean... some of these people are obviously awful. But who in their right mind would want to run an organisation in an industry where the employees haven't had a pay rise in 20 years?
Follow the Scottish Parliament's inquiry into the disaster at Dundee University live here... the role of breaching its covenant with the uni's bank is already clear. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1...
Not a disinterested observer, perhaps, but Wendy Alexanderâs statement to Holyroodâs education committee on what happened at Dundee is pretty damning. Page 18 onwards here: www.parliament.scot/~/media/comm...
There was though very little in the Augar report on HE governance, a couple of passing comments only in relation to benchmarking, VC pay and the role of the OfS plus a few more points about FE governance
Revisiting the tacit quick guides by Prof. @kaysambell.bsky.social , Prof. Phil Race and @profsallybrown.bsky.social. Still love the structure used in these guides from problem to what can we do tlu.cit.ie/contentfiles... #exemplars
UK higher ed has External Examiners, thousands of qualified people who provide their labour, *almost unremunerated* to check the actual quality of actual teaching & assessment, every year. In the "national debate on quality assurance", they might as well not exist. wonkhe.com/blogs/qualit...
#MAGA this morning
JSTOR was released in 1995, just as I was beginning my diss, concerning the history of US social sciences. It radically changed my research method, allowing me to keyword search to determine the patterns & flows of certain ideas across journals. Tech changes research methods & thatâs a good thing.
'The printing press changed the world' - sure. 'The printing press was bad' - that's a strange take.
Not everything is getting worse. Also: modern medicine is amazing. People who could cure children of diseases like this would have been worshipped like gods a few centuries ago.
This graph is astonishing. The people that bang on about ânatural birthâ and âwomen have been doing this forever without helpâ need to be forced to stare at this until their eyes water.
Jeremy Bowen's long, measured, objective, but ultimately entirely clear and conclusive essay on Israeli war crimes. As Jonathan Sumption puts it: "These things make genocide the most plausible explanation for what is now happening." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Fortifying bread was one of *the* major breakthroughs against malnutrition last century. But thanks to the middle-class conspiracy cult UPF has become, weâre moving backwards.
MEETING DAD youtu.be/KVmcddcVnvs
First they came for the Universities. Thin they cayme fer der Hi Schools Tn cmfa Eleman Skools
Just need to find the RIGHT salami to slice.
By this definition I - Irish-born Irish citizen - count as white British, whereas my very pale son - born in England to an English mother - does not. No wonder Goodwin thinks "our" numbers are declining.
'Would you go and work in Kazakhstan â if it meant saving your job? Thatâs the question quietly haunting staff at Cardiff University, according to union representatives.'
Latest piece for @thehousemag.bsky.social - on perceptions of prime ministerial power. With added marking. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...
This is really rather good comms
Certain Blue Labour backbenchers seem happy to publicly attack higher education, saying Britain needs vocational roles instead. But what did they choose for themselves? Elite higher education, of course. www.theneweuropean.co.uk/james-ball-i...
Ok, here goes: a bit tangential to James' point, but most actual normal humans don't have the easy facility with writing that this tiny group of Extremely Online people has, and so AI is both useful and impressive for many. It helps write emails, wedding speeches etc; it puts writing tools in the ..
Average comment I leave on student essays
Most political commentators are too polite to say this, but Trump won because of his appeal to the most important voting bloc: morons. If the Democrats want to win again the answer isnât becoming more left or more right, itâs coming up with dumb policies that morons like
There can be no unified theory of how people acquire their political views because people acquire correct political views from observation and analysis of their own material conditions but they acquire incorrect political views by being subjected to propaganda
Some see excellent myth-busting, others see a field full of felled strawmen
I view LLMs in much the same way I view any potentially unreliable source (Wikipedia, Fox News, random internet website, etc.) When it matters, I double check it against something I deem more reliable. How much I check depends on how critical it is I get it right.
New post just out: "On the Brink" Why so many universities are in serious financial trouble. Why it's about to get worse. What the government could do about it. (ÂŁ/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...
Plausible that UK politics is repeating French politics from 2012 on. Established centre left party finally win power under disappointing leader with v low popularity. Centre right party also collapse. Politics ends up being about creating republican front vs populist right leader. So whoâs Macron?
I miss the Tories being in charge. At least then we had the dream of a better option in the future.
That is correct
"was this a morally comfortable decision? No. But was it the right thing to do? Also no. But in order to achieve anything you need to win elections, and that is something we are certainly not going to do"
Starmer's remarks were deplorable, not because they echoed Powell (they didn't) but because they endorsed the core claims of *modern* populism: - that a "squalid" establishment conspired against the people; and - that immigration is to blame for Britain's poor economy, housing & public services.
Interesting read: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... "We concluded that feedback research often falls short of providing a clear picture of why,when, and how people learn from feedback and thus does not offer a meaningful guide on how to manage the complexities of feedback in everyday work life."
So... if a sector produces large profits, 'it is right' that a levy is imposed. And this applies to universities (whose profits from international students do not compensate for huge cuts in public funding, but never mind), and not to eg water companies and other high earners? 4/5
Yvette Cooper repeatedly refused to give a straight answer just now on Today to straight Q âWill councils get more money to pay care workers more?â She repeatedly committed to higher carer pay but wouldnât commit to money so councils can fund it. Think that speaks volumes about the mess we are in.
A comprehensive comms success.
foreign careworkers have done incalculable damage to this country (subs, pls check)
On that communications skills crisis at the heart of the Labour governmentâŚ.
It's not altogether surprising that the number of international students who, upon graduating, are finding it hard to find a job, let alone a 'graduate job' - it's happening to students across the board atm, apparently.
Not the most important thing in todayâs announcement but: uh? Universities: âwe have no cash leftâ Government: âwhat about a new tax, would that help?â Universities: âwould people not object to paying that?â Government: âoh no youâd be paying itâ (No doubt it depends on what reinvestment meansâŚ)
Amid government talk of university cost, quality, and financial efficiency, this is just one example of how the sector's survival and, in this case, assessment credibility, depend on the goodwill of its employees working for free. 5/5
If the UK has 'open borders' and 'uncontrolled immigration', then why did I spend ÂŁ15,000 over ten years and five visa applications to be here?
First universities point in the Immigration White Paper: the government's going to steal some of our money to drive us deeper into penury. For crying out loud.
Really not sure which voter thought two years was too long for a graduate visa but 18 months is great. Or given itâs supposedly not about politics, which policy goal benefits from this tweak.
The people at the Refugee Forum here in Leeds are not âstrangersâ - theyâre friends, neighbours, family members or just people who need a helping hand. Starmerâs language is utterly abhorrent. I expected better. #labourparty
On universities the white paper only reduces the graduate visa from two years to 18 months (which is a win for the DfE). The bigger thing universities will be worrying about is this little timebomb.
This Labour governmentâs apparently policy in office is to somehow improve growth/productivity while attempting to force a larger share of the overall workforce into lower value add employment and undermining profit centres. Itâs definitively an unconventional approach!
Amazing news that the Home Office has apparently worked out how to bring hundreds of thousands of native UK workers into the care industry
âThe Government is expected to urge universities to shake up their business models to make them less reliant on foreign studentsâ OK, so what is the business model youâve got in mind? Are you planning to raise tuition fees? Plus you know research is not fully funded and is cross subsidised?
Why do you think academics are in favour of that situation?
There is something bordering on abusive in the way ministers today are talking about public services â Jacqui Smith on universities, and Yvette Cooper on care homes. They are blaming institutions for decisions forced on them by government, without admitting they or changing anything.
I think this is largely a function of them being trapped by the fiscal situation. They can't fix anything so trying to blame others. It won't work any better than it did for the Tories.
Vote Labour, get Reform.
The way that's played out in Dundee, with just one uni needing the bailout, suggests it's not something Labour should be so complacent about. Do any Labour front benchers have unis in their constituency?
Well thatâs me depressed for the weekend. As Glen acidly observes this looks like a pretty transparent effort to shift blame for coming university bankruptcies onto the institutions. Good luck with selling that to whichever MPs are about to lose their constituencyâs largest employer.
I have never seen people run away from the scene of a public policy disaster quicker than this one. Astonishing and disgraceful. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...
So the only benefit Labour offered the sector over the Tories was warm words. Now that's gone. Thanks for nothing.
I concede that I fell for this, so this is a useful corrective.
On balance the Kick Your Granny Down The Stairs Act was probably a mistake, but to cover the costs of repealing it, we're going to have to apply the Throw Your Puppy In The Fire Act even more stringently.