Higher Education Reform

Blog posts and resources relating to reform in higher education. To start a new discussion on HE reform issues, visit the forum via the above link.

Higher Education Reform Forum

UK backs Social Science, the World benefits

By Academy of Social Sciences | Published: June 13, 2013

Studying ourselves is something the British do exceptionally well: specialists flock here from all over the world seeking answers to fundamental questions from our unique series of cohort birth studies, and no one else has anything quite like them.

Also posted in Academic Funding, Featured | Tagged Acad, Administrative Data Taskforce, AHRC, and Skills, Birth Cohort, Birth Cohort Studies, British Government, Campaign for Social Science, Coalition, David Willetts, Department of Business, Diana Kuh, Economic and Developmental Demography, employment data, ESRC, FE data, HE data, Heather Joshi, innovation, Longi, Making the Case for the Social Sciences, National Science Foundation, NRC Unit of Lifelong Health and Ageing, Polly Toynbee, SAGE, Social Mobility Transparency Board, social science, Universities and Science, Ziyad Marar | Leave a comment

Can Brands be Intellectuals?

By Daniel Nehring | Published: May 27, 2013

As an academic, you are a brand not only as a matter of choice, but, increasingly, due to powerful institutional imperatives that are becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Also posted in Academic Funding, Early Career, Featured, Impact | Tagged academia, Academic Jobs, Branding, bureaucratization, C.Write Mills, careers, competition, Early Career Researchers, intellectuals, jobs, research, social networking, social science, The Sociological Imagination, Twitter | Leave a comment

The Myth of Academic Stardom

By Daniel Nehring | Published: May 14, 2013

The recent and on-going reforms of higher education are enforcing an individualisation of academic labour. That academics would gamely play along with such a system is astonishing.

Also posted in Early Career, Featured, Impact | Tagged academic branding, Branding, Corporatization, doctorates, individualization, labor, labour, REF, reform, social science, sociology | 1 Comment

Stand Out and Be Counted: Quantitative Skills and Social Scientists

By British Academy | Published: May 2, 2013

The British Academy recently published a guide for students encouraging those studying the humanities and social sciences to become statistically savvy.

Also posted in Early Career, Impact, Interdisciplinarity, News, Public Policy, Research Methods | Tagged business, ESRC, HEFCE, journalism, Politics, public sector, Quantitative skills, social science, statistics, The British Academy | 1 Comment

Accountability, Compliance and Bureaucratisation in Higher Education

By Ferdinand von Prondzynski | Published: April 26, 2013

Around the educational mission we are now spinning a web of ‘accountability’ that has little to do with explaining or justifying our activities, and much to do with obscuring our responsibility through the creation of elaborate processes.

Also posted in Featured, Impact, International Debate, News | Tagged Academic Job, Academic job seeking, accountability, bureaucratization, Dublin City University, ociety of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, risk management, university | 2 Comments

Modernizing Universities?

By Robert Dingwall | Published: April 8, 2013

Universities are starting to look like the behemoths of the US auto industry of the 1980s, with highly-paid CEOs buried in their offices looking only at numbers.

Also posted in International Debate, News, Public Policy | Tagged CEO, Corporatization, economics, employment, Funding, higher education, innovation, managerial, organizational management, social science, University management | 2 Comments

So Much Noise: Are Academics being Over-Branded?

By Daniel Nehring | Published: March 27, 2013

The Ivory Tower has been toppled and academia has an impact in the ‘real world’. The problem is that this may have come at the expense of truly innovative and critical scholarship.

Also posted in Featured, Impact, International Debate, News, Public Engagement | Tagged Branding, British Sociological Association, BSA, education, Entreprenurial university, Ivory Tower, Matthew Goodwin, social science, sociology, The Guardian | 5 Comments

Open Access and the Privatisation of Knowledge

By Martin Eve | Published: March 25, 2013

Is OA the flip side to privatisation of Higher Education? Is there a way in which OA is a means of justifying the economic inaccessibility of HE by providing a public good?

Also posted in Communication, Impact, International Debate, News, Open Access, Public Engagement | Tagged academic publishing, humanities, Martin Eve, neoliberalism, open access, Privatisation, privatization, Publishing, social science | 1 Comment

Why Study Social Science

By The Monkey Cage | Published: March 5, 2013

We study social science because social phenomena affect people’s lives in profound ways. If you want to start with Cantor’s focus—physical illness and death—then social phenomena are tremendously important.

Also posted in Academic Funding, Impact, International Debate, News, Public Policy | Tagged Eric Cantor, Funding, National Science Foundation, NIH, NSF, political science, social science, sociology, The Monkey Cage | 5 Comments

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