“Theese eeese pure eediocy!” –a German professor’s response at a faculty meeting regarding accreditation recommendations to put an outreach program to attract female STEM students inside of an outreach program to attract female STEM students. The previous sentence is typed as intended. While people “on the inside” of science can quickly answer the title of […] … learn more→

As we grapple with regular reminders that the America available to whites is still different from the America available to people of colour, one environment that must be examined is the university classroom and gradebook. Most US universities distribute standardised policies, to be included in all course syllabi, assuring students that their educational environment will […] … learn more→

I’ve mentioned quite a few times the insanely high administrative pay of higher education. Even the most irrelevant Dean can now command a salary well past $100,000 a year, and this is all quite public information. It isn’t just the salary that is ridiculous, it’s the sheer number of administrators on campus now. If there’s […] … learn more→

When I first started doing experimental biology, I noticed that we only looked at males. I was in a fly lab — a very good one — and we could have looked at males or females, or both, but we didn’t. We collected female flies to mate, of course (flies need males and females to […] … learn more→

If you think back to your childhood, what sticks with you? For many people, it’s those cosy times when they were cuddled up with a parent or grandparent, being read a story. But bedtime stories aren’t just lovely endings to the day or a way to induce sleep, they are also a safe way to […] … learn more→

The “glass ceiling” effect in advancing gender equality is well-recognised, but at least progress for women is being made in some quarters. Not so for staff from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. It is a stark fact that the ethnic composition of universities reflects a history of racial inequality. While widening access policies have focused […] … learn more→

The discipline of economics has come in for a rough time since the 2008 crash. Not only did economists largely fail to predict what would happen, but many of their critics felt that the discipline shared some responsibility for the disaster. Economic orthodoxy, it was said, advanced a spurious set of models that had served […] … learn more→

It’s so hard to keep up with the madness infecting our universities. Core to the lunacy is the simple fact that educators have no influence over education today, and instead administrators, with no education themselves, get to decide what an “educated” person should know. Thus we have courses on Game of Thrones, but at least […] … learn more→

For the last year, schools around the country have been obliged to promote fundamental British values. So far, little officially has been said about how the new policy is being received in schools, but the conversations I’ve had with teachers suggest to me that it is lukewarm. As a result, I have come to the […] … learn more→

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v University of Texas, an affirmative action case the Court is currently deciding, will dictate whether public colleges’ and universities’ use of race to create diverse learning environments is constitutional. Sixty years ago, the University of Texas (UT) was at the center of another Supreme Court decision, Sweatt v […] … learn more→