With the world’s annual climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow this year, you would expect the UK’s top research-intensive universities to be leading the response to the climate emergency. After all, they can readily draw upon expert advice. They should be showing the way to becoming zero carbon institutions. But ambitious targets drawn up a decade […] … learn more→

The democratization of access to universities is an issue that concerns, to a greater or lesser extent, all countries and higher education systems. The number of students who began to attend universities from the 1960s grew exponentially. This changed the way of understanding this institution. Its reason for being was no longer found only in an elite […] … learn more→

COVID-19 lockdowns were a huge disruption for Australian universities. With students unable to come to campus, many universities turned to “online proctoring solutions” to monitor students during exam time. Many of these systems rely on automated facial recognition or detection, often combined with human video-monitoring of students’ homes, leading to concerns about bias, inaccuracy and […] … learn more→

Erasmus is one of the more popular programs offering the students’ exchange in European countries. The major target group of the program is individual students, but also the entire academic organizations may participate in the exchange. The paramount objective of this project is to promote equal opportunities and fair access to education for students from […] … learn more→

The future for young academics looks bleak. A long-term trend – once linear, now exponential – shows that the percentage of PhD holders attaining a permanent faculty position is catastrophically low. While it is common knowledge that the academic market is turbulent, the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to a whole generation of students. I […] … learn more→

“Spanish university students do not know how to write.” This is a mantra that all teachers have heard at some time. This problem, far from being trivial, can have important personal and social repercussions. Not knowing how to write can limit the labor insertion of students and the international projection of Spain in spaces in which academic and […] … learn more→

With the proliferation of female robots like Sophia, chatbots like Amelia , and the popularity of female virtual assistants like Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon) and Cortana (Microsoft), artificial intelligence seems to have a gender issue. This gender imbalance in AI is a strong trend that has drawn strong criticism in the media. Even UNESCO warns of the dangers of this […] … learn more→

When recent or soon-to-be college graduates begin to seek employment, many inevitably turn to job-search and networking platforms on the internet. The platforms include some that are college-based – such as Handshake, Symplicity GradLeaders and 12twenty – as well as networking platforms like LinkedIn and PeopleGrove. With COVID-19 having moved job searches more and more into the virtual realm, these platforms are playing an increasingly […] … learn more→

Imagine you are in a job interview. As you answer the recruiter’s questions, an artificial intelligence (AI) system scans your face, scoring you for nervousness, empathy and dependability. It may sound like science fiction, but these systems are increasingly used, often without people’s knowledge or consent. Emotion recognition technology (ERT) is in fact a burgeoning multi-billion-dollar industry that aims to use AI to detect […] … learn more→

At the start of the year, US president-elect Joe Biden wrote a letter to his science adviser, Eric Lander, calling for a reinvigoration of the US’ science and technology strategy. Biden posed two strikingly similar questions to those asked by Franklin D. Roosevelt of his own science adviser, Vannevar Bush, in his famous 1944 letter. […] … learn more→