Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Computers Broke It. Computers Can Fix It
Computers have revolutionized academic research – and at the same time created a new crop of problems. But, suggests Ben Marwick, computers can also help address some of the challenges they have created.
All Eggs in a Few Baskets Doesn’t Work for Universities, Either
The Russell Group argues that research funding should be concentrated in the most elite institutions, Two sociologists who have studied how Asian universities have fared in global rankings argue just the opposite.
Why Is It Again that the US Doesn’t Study Gun Violence?
The dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health argues that the relatively limited data the United States’ has available about firearms and firearm violence prevents any serious policy prescriptions from arising. A law that prevents the CDC from funding research that might support gun control has scared all federal funders from touching the issue.
‘Turgid’ Is NOT a Compliment
Academics need to enter the discussion that the rest of the world engages in every day, argue Jonathan Wai and David Miller. That requires them to write in a more conversational way, they write in an article first published at, umm, The Conversation.
Showing Institutions Matter: Douglass North, 1920-2015
Douglass C. North’s contributions to economic theory have had an enormous influence on how scholars understand institutions and the process of economic change.
The Value Added by Universities Exceeds Their Constituent Services
Academics do not simply teach and do research: they are teacher-researchers, notes Steve Fuller. In reviewing the UK spending review, he says, it is the value added to society by nurturing this complex role that should be at the forefront of the state’s thinking about the criteria used to fund universities.
Will the UK Government Listen to Nurse Review?
Scientists in the UK are facing great uncertainty ahead of the Conservative government’s comprehensive spending review on November 25. Not only is funding for UK research under threat, the government is believed to be planning on culling many of the agencies that fund research in an effort to make savings.
Welcoming the American ‘Nudge Unit’
The White House’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team has done an impressive job so far in using small, inexpensive changes to make federal policies better serve citizens.
