Targeting academic balance

If you have never heard of Andrew Breitbart, think yourself lucky. He is a man with a mission in the United States, mostly to do with combating anything he regards as liberal. He has maintained several websites dedicated to these pursuits, some of which use interesting techniques: secretly taken video footage is used to discredit [...]

Sleepless in Aberdeen

I won’t tell you how late it is as I write this. But let us just say that, when I finish this post and head off to bed, it will be well after midnight. And I don’t mean 12.15 am. It is now Saturday, and so in the morning I’ll get up much later than [...]

The power of design

Welcome to the wedding-free zone… Two news items yesterday told an interesting story. The Guardian newspaper (and others) reported that, for the first time in many years, the IT company Apple reported higher revenues and profits than Microsoft, thereby bringing to an end an era in which, at first, Apple was thought to be dying [...]

Ireland: so what *has* happened to the ‘employment control framework’?

After the anger generated in the Irish university community over the second phase of the government’s ‘employment control framework’ (under which staff recruitment and promotions in higher education are heavily restricted by the state), it might be asked what has happened to the whole thing. There had been some hints from the new Minister for [...]

Life’s soundtrack

Recently I attended a public lecture by a noted academic, and was intrigued that before he began his address he took out an iPod and attached it to a sound system and switched it on. It played the ‘Trout Quintet‘ by Schubert. After we had listened to the music for perhaps four or five minutes, [...]

In a spin

The journal Times Higher Education has published an interesting piece on university spin-out companies. According to research done by an organisation called Spinouts UK, over the past 10 years UK universities were able to form well over 1,000 companies, mainly in order to commercialise the institutions’ intellectual property. The top performer in the list is [...]

Saving the city

Some readers will know that I am now a resident of Aberdeen in Scotland. I work in Robert Gordon University, and my office is right in the middle of the city, a few yards from the main thoroughfare, Union Street. Aberdeen, known as the ‘Granite City’, has many elegant buildings and some very old alleyways [...]

Privatising higher education

From time to time it has been suggested by critics of recent reforms in higher education that university heads want to ‘privatise’ their institutions. Mostly this charge has been without any real foundation. That, however, does not mean that privatisation cannot happen. Indeed, a report in yesterday’s Times newspaper suggests it may become a reality [...]

On the way to the Senate

If you are a graduate of the National University of Ireland or the University of Dublin, or if you are a member of the Oireachtas, or if you are an elected local authority member, or if you are the Taoiseach, then you are a voter in the second phase of the Irish parliamentary elections of [...]

Is your tuition fee a status symbol?

For those observing the admittedly extraordinary spectacle of tuition fee announcements by English universities, a statement by one university head may have raised eyebrows even more. The Vice-Chancellor of Teesside University, Professor Graham Henderson, in announcing tuition fees of £8,500 (just below the maximum permitted) was reported in the Daily Telegraph as saying that ‘imposing [...]