Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
What’s ‘World Class’ About University Rankings?
Higher education is a globally competitive market and institutions with a high rank can claim exceptionalism that brings in students and funding, acknowledges our Michelle Stack. But are rankings genuinely useful for students or for research?
The Never-Ending Audit®: Questioning the Lecturer Experience
The never-ending audit makes a crucial point about the ways in which power structures have shifted within universities, argues our Daniel Nehring. In effect, it suggests the death of the ideal of the autonomous scholar-researcher-teacher.
Take Away Tenure, and Professors Become Sheep
Alice Dreger says shecan see clearly that universities in which the majority of the faculty feel unsafe in terms of job security become places where no one feels safe to do anything that might risk upsetting someone.
Existing Career Incentives Are Often Bad for Science
A culture of bad science can evolve as a result of institutional incentives that prioritize simple quantitative metrics as measures of success, argues Paul Smaldino. But, he adds, not all is lost as new initiatives such as open data and replication are making a positive difference.
The Soviet System, Neoliberalism and British Universities
Craig Brandist compares aspects of British higher education to the old Soviet Union, with a similar tendency towards stagnation and strategies that workers adopt to absorb managerial pressure.
How Statistics Are Twisted to Obscure Public Understanding
We likely all remember the maxim about statistics and lies. Statistical data do not allow for lies so much as semantic manipulation, explains Jonathan Goodman. In short, numbers drive the misuse of words.
The Transformation of UK Higher Education Since 1968
Since the heyday of the student movement in the late 1960s policy decisions in the United Kingdom have mostly pushed universities into neoliberal boxes that ill-fit the needs of students and the society at large, argues Hugo Radice.
Recognition for Peer Review: Who’s Doing What?
To help celebrate Peer Review Week 2016, the steering committee for the commemoration asked the 20+ organisations on the group to tell us how they #recognizereview and what more they hope to do in future. Their responses show a clear understanding of the importance of peer review and a firm commitment to supporting more recognition for review in future.
