Features from THE

Executive overdrive

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Do vice-chancellors have too many plates in the air? Times Higher Education's annual survey of pay in the academy looks at the additional roles the sector's leaders take on. In an era of pay restraint, handsomely rewarded bosses...

Windows on their worlds

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

From Thoreau's pond and Hawthorne's gables to Hardy's study and the Brontës' moors: Dale Salwak draws on his own literary pilgrimages to open students' eyes to the sense of place underpinning great literature

Free-range thinkers

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Independent scholars can confound, complement and challenge the work of their campus counterparts. Matthew Reisz meets some on the edges of academia whose interests - and prose - are unfettered by the REF, journal editors or disciplinary...

Publish - and be damned

Thu, 3 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

When Bernard Porter was persuaded to entrust one of his books to a company he'd not worked with before, he discovered that not all publishers are equal. Caveat emptor, he warns young academics

Revolutionary road

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

As the fallout from the Arab Spring continues, David Matthews reports from Cairo on the birth - and troubled infancy - of the student union movement in Egypt

Jobs for the boys

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The despair over unemployment that sparked the Arab Spring continues to dog graduates in the region. David Matthews reports from a British Council conference in Morocco that aimed to find solutions

Off Piste - Pools of Thought

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Valerie Sanders has overcome her fear of water - as long as it's the indoor, chlorinated variety - to discover a love of swimming that brings out the worst and the best in her

Why so prickly?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

International students have enriched the UK and its universities immeasurably. It makes little sense for the Home Office to keep them out, argues Edward Acton

Children of the revolution

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

For the late Julia Swindells, radicalism and friendship were always intimately linked. Here, she describes the youthful influences that led her down a political path

Surplus value

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Hefce says that record levels of spare cash prepare the academy for the new fees regime, but as new policies for allocating student places bed in, we might need to reassess its future financial prospects. John Morgan reports

Semi-fictional character

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

He was driven to write an acclaimed debut novel in stolen hours, but lecturer, researcher and scholarly biographer Christopher Bigsby is content never to call himself a 'real writer'

Flying solo

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You think your commute is bad? In a tough job market, professional opportunities are taking scholars far from their nearest and dearest. Matthew Reisz asks if today's ideal academic is unencumbered by ties or responsibilities

Uncharted territory

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The REF's conflation of intellectual quality and geographical scale makes little sense and may have negative consequences for UK research, argues Alastair Bonnett

Get back in the saddle

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In the academy all must have prizes, but nothing breeds success like failure. Steven Schwartz argues that students gain more from blind alleys than from victory processions, as failure engenders the 'true grit' essential to achievement in...

Printing pressed

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Dissemination of the written word is changing as e-books proliferate. But how will it affect academics and the publishing industry? Andrew Franklin reads between the lines

The spaces between

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A fleeting glimpse of a renowned soprano ignited Peter Crisp's lifelong love of song cycles and lieder...but left him pining for an overture

Insecure in the knowledge

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

As old-style lifelong tenure fades out in the US, institutions are having to invent new systems by which they can define and judge scholarship, David Mould discovers

Creative vs accounting

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Allowing universities to be run by bean counters and bureaucrats is detrimental to academics' ingenuity and productivity, argues Amanda Goodall

Women and children first

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

For decades the science of child-rearing was guided by patriarchal ideas, but now the cradle rocks to an older rhythm. Eric Michael Johnson, in conversation with eminent evolutionary biologists Sarah Hrdy and Robert Trivers, explores how...

Third-culture club

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The 'sciart' movement is bridging the gulf between the 'two cultures' that C.P. Snow lamented more than 50 years ago. Matthew Reisz reports from the lab of the imagination, where anything can happen

Satisfaction and its discontents

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The National Student Survey puts pressure on lecturers to provide 'enhanced' experiences. But, argues Frank Furedi, the results do not measure educational quality and the process infantilises students and corrodes academic integrity

Imperial echoes

Thu, 8 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

'Internationalisation' is the trend du jour for universities, but they would do well to consider its earlier manifestation during the British Empire's long 19th century. As Tamson Pietsch explains, history has much to tell us about...

Enigma variations

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

David Willetts wants more of them, but how much is really known about the UK's private providers? John Morgan uncovers a melange of institutions in a diverse and diversifying sector unbound by caps and largely operating outside QAA oversight

Weapon of Mass Education

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Some v-cs took fright when Les Ebdon stated his readiness to use the 'nuclear option' to enforce access agreements as head of Offa. What does that say about the state of the sector? asks Martin McQuillan

Cap and gown learning on a shoestring budget

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

With novel credentials being developed and employers seeing the value of low-cost study based on open courseware, Jon Marcus asks if the bricks-and-mortar elite will end up on the wrong side of history

Dissatisfied?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Stefan Collini is, and he thinks you should be, too. He explains to Matthew Reisz why universities must not pander to students, business or the government and instead defend their own distinctive virtues

Off Piste - Lesser Spotted - Well, that's just the professors

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Physicist Athene Donald's pleasure in people-watching may owe something to a childhood spent observing birds of all kinds as they soared over city heaths and icy coastal mudflats

Turn on, tune in, don't drop out

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The first months at university are critical for a happy student experience. Indeed, so crucial are they that they are arguably a key focus of QAA reviews. Sarah Cunnane reports

Sage advice

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Close ties with Nobel laureates, global entrepreneurs and distinguished academics can boost an institution's international profile, as well as providing fresh insights, experience - and a hint of glamour. Philip G. Altbach and Jamil Salmi...