At first glance, it looks as though the group of young adults is building Lego. But these are actually students at the University of Cape Town’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Thinking, and they’re using the colourful blocks to design a prototype. It represents policy reform ideas around transitioning from informal to formal economies. It’s […] … learn more→

With reports of increasing violence and drug use, along with high levels of suicide and a lack of staff, prisons in the UK are currently seen to be in a state of crisis. In recent years, the condition of British prisons has come under political, academic and public scrutiny. But what a lot of people […] … learn more→

When an imam admits that he faces accusations of treachery from within his community simply for talking to a rabbi, you get some sense of just how dangerously divided our cities and countries are becoming. We face a real moment of crisis. Wherever we look, the growing tolerance of differences that we had for so […] … learn more→

It may seem like a doomed attempt to mix business and pleasure. But a growing number of young professionals in Silicon Valley insist that taking small doses of psychedelic drugs simply makes them perform better at work – becoming more creative and focused. The practice, known as “microdosing”, involves taking minute quantities of drugs such […] … learn more→

Times Higher Education recently announced in its BRICS and Emerging Economics University Rankings 2017 that India has increased its share of top universities, but China still has the highest density of leading universities in the developing world. In the BRICS rankings, Chinese universities occupy six of the top 10 positions. There is a growing trend for […] … learn more→

There is no shortage of voices telling PhD students what they absolutely must do (or not do) to complete their theses and secure jobs afterwards. My experience is that some of the advice thrown at PhD students is inaccurate at best and actively harmful at worst. I ignored a lot of it. Nevertheless, I submitted […] … learn more→

In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting four leading universities abroad. At KU Leuven in Belgium, Oxford in the UK and two US institutions – Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley – I was exposed to new ideas and learned about novel approaches to higher education. It was both interesting and reassuring to […] … learn more→

Details, details. More, or less? Doctoral researchers may get feedback from supervisors or reviewers about writing less detail – too much here, be more concise – or conversely more, unpack this or more information needed here. Both types of comment mean you haven’t got the detail and length right. So how do you know when enough detail is […] … learn more→

College tuition has been soaring for years but the expense of college is far worse than what we’ve been told. See, admin knows that tuition is tracked, and tracked carefully, and so has long since made a shell game out of college expenses. While college tuition goes up a few percent every year, book prices […] … learn more→

Here are some surprising facts about humans’ effect on planet Earth. We have made enough concrete to create an exact replica of Earth 2mm thick. We have produced enough plastic to wrap Earth in clingfilm. We are creating “technofossils”, a new term for congealed human-made materials – plastics and concretes – that will be around […] … learn more→