Higher Education Reform

Introduction: Academic Freedom in Crisis
International Debate
September 2, 2016

Introduction: Academic Freedom in Crisis

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University Decolonization: More Than Mere Iconoclasm
Higher Education Reform
August 18, 2016

University Decolonization: More Than Mere Iconoclasm

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Is Peer Review an Achilles Heel for Interdisciplinary Work?
Higher Education Reform
August 16, 2016

Is Peer Review an Achilles Heel for Interdisciplinary Work?

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Seeking a Better Way to Evaluate Teachers
Higher Education Reform
August 11, 2016

Seeking a Better Way to Evaluate Teachers

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Does Competition Make Peer Review More Unfair?

Does Competition Make Peer Review More Unfair?

Researchers decided to conduct behavioral testing on competition and the process of peer review. What they learned offers some prescriptions for improving peer review going forward.

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Stern Review: The REF and the Damage Done

Stern Review: The REF and the Damage Done

The new report of the REF from Lord Stern hopefully may shift the spotlight away from individual researchers themselves and onto the organizational practice of their universities, argues Richard Watermeyer.

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If We Scrap Tenure, What Would Replace It?

If We Scrap Tenure, What Would Replace It?

Universities need faculty who are dedicated to teaching, but the most persuasive argument in support of tenure – its role in protecting academic freedom– has come to be too narrowly associated with research.

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Migrants Ate My Guinea Pig

Migrants Ate My Guinea Pig

German-born Daniel Nehring insists that the upcoming Brexit vote is founded less on reason and more on xenophobia, and argues that the toxic atmosphere surrounding the vote is already doing harm to Britain’s fabled academic enterprise.

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Which University Rankings Should You Trust?

Which University Rankings Should You Trust?

There are at least 12 university rankings that claim to be global, and in this video Michelle Stack focuses on the big three — the Times Higher Education, QS, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities. She asks what does being a “top-ranked” university mean to students? And who decides this ranking anyway?

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The UK’s HE Landscape in the Wake of ‘Knowledge Economy’

The UK’s HE Landscape in the Wake of ‘Knowledge Economy’

The new government report ‘Succeeding as a Knowledge Economy’ takes forward most of the ideas about improving teaching at Britain institutions of higher education already found in a green paper published in November 2015. So what does this new report tell us about the future?

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Response to Nehring: What’s the Point of British Sociology?

Response to Nehring: What’s the Point of British Sociology?

Rebutting Daniel Nehring’s recent post asking if sociology still matters in Britain, Robert Dingwall responds that sociology does have a good story to tell about itself, even in the age of austerity.

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Does Sociology Still Matter in Britain?

Does Sociology Still Matter in Britain?

Daniel Nehring sees a fundamental contradiction between the critically engaged scholarship on social inequalities and power structures that British sociologists still produce and the thoroughly financialized, individualistic, and highly competitive organisational logics of the universities in which they work.

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