Social science may be faring better politically in UK than US, says Ziyad Marar, but let’s avoid complacency at all costs

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.

Much of the current confusion about crime trends is born of the tendency to bunch together a whole range of different harms and actions under the abstract category of ‘crime’. This blinds us to where the significant problems are.

When I was a student, I had teachers who spoke about opportunities to study abroad in terms of things like the ability to widen one’s emotional and intellectual horizon.To today’s hardboiled politicians, journalists, and academic managers, these views must seem quaint and laughable.

Just a few years ago, critical voices could still speak through mainstream media to highlight the dangers of the quickly accelerating commercialisation of academia. These commentators have now been pushed to the margins.

Many PhD graduates are forced into the troubled world of unemployment while, at the same time, being denied a public voice. How is it that extremely narrow standards of professional legitimacy are used to judge young scholars who simply cannot meet them?

On 16 April, Aditya Chakrabortty wrote an article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, arguing that social scientists have failed to step up and offer alternatives in the wake of the economic crisis. Here, Andrew Gamble FBA responds.

The Guardian yesterday published a set of worrying facts. Even though consumers of higher education pay almost three times as much in tuition fees than they did six years ago, face-to-face with lecturers in class has barely increased

Overcoming physics envy from the New York Times, How belief is the key to dealing with climate change skepticism from the Guardian, and much more in this big edition of Social Science News.

A response to Sir Simon Jenkins’ article on the value of public universities.