The UK government’s announcement that all universities in England can resume in-person teaching from today will give a welcome boost not only to students but also to exam invigilators like me. Online exams were the only sensible option during the height of the pandemic – although it took some university departments quite a while to […] … learn more→

This post comes back again at the discussion “chapter”. It seems you can never say too much about this tricky bit of the thesis. A caveat before I start. This post is written from a social science perspective and offers a fairly orthodox view of what a thesis has to do. I think it has […] … learn more→

Creating a learn-at-home experience in just a few weeks last year was an incredible achievement for universities. But this rapid shift created a problem: cyber-criminals have been gifted the perfect opportunity to target them. The University of Northampton’s recent experience shows how much damage these attacks can cause: its IT services – including email and […] … learn more→

Most university senior women I know have had “the style” conversation at least once in their career. It goes something like this. The line manager of the female staff member asks for a meeting, or raises the matter during a performance-review meeting. There has been “feedback” about her, and it’s not positive, unfortunately. There is […] … learn more→

A few years ago, when conferences were still public events, I was midway through giving a paper when someone shouted out “You’re wrong!” – but offered no further elaboration. When I tell this tale to non-academic friends, they are typically horrified. Such public rudeness would not be tolerated in their workplaces, they say. Yet some […] … learn more→

When Australians think of international education and China, they typically consider the country as a source of international students — Australia’s largest. But China is now one of the leading host countries of international students in the world. China’s level of international education policymaking over the past decade, backed up by strategic priorities, has been unprecedented. My recently published research shows Chinese […] … learn more→

As a former vice-chancellor, I understand the need to balance a university’s books and to refocus provision from time to time. And I realise that those who lead institutions now do so amid a pandemic they could not have predicted, an associated loss of international student income that they can do little to stem and […] … learn more→

Building a career you can rely on starts with the type of education you receive. Many people start off with one degree and eventually go all the way, finally earning their Ph.D. Others finish their initial degree and then pursue a variety of certifications in an attempt to broaden their horizons and give them a […] … learn more→

Despite the increasing diversity among America’s college students, business school professors remain overwhelmingly white. In U.S. business schools, Black and Hispanic individuals make up 23.2% of students, yet only 6.7% of the faculty. As a researcher with a long-standing interest in the reasons business schools lack diverse faculty, I – along with marketing professor Sonja Martin Poole – set out to examine how business schools select […] … learn more→

In 1973 the late Donald Murray published an essay in The Writer in which he argues that writing begins when the first draft is completed. From then on, he says, the writer revises, reads and changes their words, closing in on the meaning they are trying to make. Revision isnt a virtuous act, Murray states, it is simply an […] … learn more→