Coventry University is making bold moves into international higher education, signing two agreements since Christmas to open new branch campuses. One, on a purpose-built campus in Casablanca, Morocco, will provide teacher training and courses in business and science and technology in partnership with Morocco’s Superior Institution of Science and Technology (SIST). The other, in Wrocław, Poland, will […] … learn more→
Branch campuses are unlikely to blossom
In defense of the master class
The debate on university education is more alive than ever, and it is insisted by active and passive an idea that, roughly , we can enunciate as follows: our students live in a reality that demands competencies, both transversal or generic as specific , depending on the scope of knowledge. Conclusion: university pedagogy must adapt to the current situation that arises . […] … learn more→
Debate: How to rethink research funding?
The future multi- annual research programming law ( LPPR ) is causing serious concern in the world of higher education. On the one hand, researchers , dissatisfied with the current situation, are asking for more resources, while rejecting the principle of a selective, therefore unequal, distribution of resources – selective distribution which, in fact, already exists. On the other, research administrators and policy makers […] … learn more→
Plan S does the wrong things to the wrong people
UK researchers may worry about the effects of leaving the European Union on their research, but a bigger peril may be the united front that the UK continues to present with other EU countries over open access. The aim of the dozen or so mostly European funding agencies that have signed up to Plan S […] … learn more→
What harm can it do? The emotional cost of asking for something in academia
In academia, people tell you all the time to just go ahead and ask for what you need. ‘What harm can it do?’, they ask. Or, being a woman, they say, “Think what a man would do and do that”, as though it’s literally that easy. Of course, it should be that easy, but we […] … learn more→
Dogs and cats and rabbits and..
This week I’m working on book proofs. And right at the start, in “prelims”, I noticed an acknowledgement I’d made. I’d written: Charlie, our surly and eccentric elderly poodle, needed to be put outside at regular intervals; she ensured that I did not end up with completely overwhelming back and neck troubles from too much […] … learn more→
Debate: Secularism at school, historical dead ends
In a letter addressed to the President of the Republic on February 4, 2020, the president of the Les Républicains party, Christian Jacob, renews his request , made in November 2019, for “an act II of secularism with reference to the initiative taken by Jacques Chirac in 2003 when he installed the commission chaired by Bernard Stasi ”. […] … learn more→
Rethinking the sanction, a challenge for the school
It is never by deciphering the great and beautiful principles written in gold letters on the frontispiece of schools that we understand what educating means, at a given time, for a given society. It is rather by examining what one could call “the suburbs of educational work”, these margins which surround the transmission of knowledge, and […] … learn more→
If you’re preparing students for 21st century jobs, you’re behind the times
Every year, the Australian Taxation Office releases a report that includes the highest earning occupations in Australia. These are mostly in the medical, legal and financial sectors. This information is commonly used by school career advisers, together with other career development material, to help teenagers make career choices. But the nature of work is changing rapidly under the fourth […] … learn more→
Who oversees journal editors?
Editors and reviewers are the most important authorities in academic publishing because they read, examine and ultimately decide the fate of a submitted paper. This work is often not paid, making the commitment to it even more admirable. However, this fascinating process becomes suspicious when the editorial board of a journal refuses to publish a […] … learn more→