Daniel Katz

But that's the challenge of our time, Natalia.

Another way to solve this problem is to make universities free. If you want a democracy, you can never have "too many" people who are "too educated." Now more than ever, when misinformation is rife in ways we couldn't have imagined 20 years ago.

That is absolutely right. And I'm only half-joking when I say that soon that will apply to people who have written on the French Resistance or the Heydrich assassination.

I wonder what percentage of actually existing HE teachers in the UK think the TEF has improved teaching, and what percentage think TEF has made it worse. This would be an interesting study.

The TEF is specifically designed NOT to punish universities for putting staff in exploitative conditions which affect their ability to teach properly. For the TEF, excellence in teaching = 1) hiring more bureaucrats, 2) increasing the number of pointless meetings, 3) filing stupid paperwork.

Abolish the OFS, the single biggest enemy of higher education in the UK.

Outstanding! My alma mater, Reed College, is famous for refusing to cooperate with US News and World Report's rankings, and nothing could make me prouder than to see my employer, @warwickuni.bsky.social , also withdraw from all ranking schemes.

No.

What do you actually think we should do, as things crumble around us (I ask you seriously, not rhetorically)? If you have a good strategic idea, I'm very happy to listen and change my mind. Best, Dan.

And why is it that governments were able to create a situation in which the "employers" are unable to pay us? And what have the "employers" done to prevent it? And where do you think the power for change lies if not with us?

Mine were eager for their children to have perfect English, but ALSO sent them to Yiddish school. For them Yiddish was the only vehicle of cultural identity.

My grandparents inevitably picked up a little Russian and Polish but I'm not sure how much. The one Russian phrase my father learned growing up was "not in front of the children!"

semi-literate in all languages or only English? I had semi-literate great aunts very much like your grandmother, but they read the Yiddish press.

Tomorrow, in fact, but only for a few hours!

It really feels like a bunch of people who by thinking they are too smart to fall into a trap have in fact fallen into one. And they're paying the price for the axiom "if it comes from the left it's sh*t." No principles--we knew that--but no tactics either.

Great news! I can cross waiting ten hours to see a doctor in Croydon University Hospital's A and E off my bucket list!

Astonishing, yes. Surprising, no. Everything now is a "branding" decision, and universities no longer even have a vocabulary for talking about what most of the scholars within them think they are for.

Ummmmm.....title?

Can a nation in crisis rely on the baby boomer generation to step up? I think the UK is about to find out | Phillip Inman A raid on property wealth and pensions is being signalled by the Treasury, and it has sound reasons for doing just that, says Phillip Inman, the Guardian’s senior economics writer

In every generation, some people are rich and some people are poor; some have made money by exploiting others, and others have been exploited. No one on the Left should accept the idea of "generational fairness"; that's a false division, obscuring the real ones. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Is there any other season there?

In addition to the cynicism and stupidity of this article is its failure to manage another distinguishing characteristic of almost all these systems: they are free, or close to it. The UK scandal is charging exorbitant fees for a level of provision getting ever closer to ones which are free.

No, Natalia, that has to be impossible! Any group in such a situation would surely launch a massive strike until reasonable demands were met!

Yes, exactly.

The more a university degree is tailored to a particular industry's narrow short-term needs, the more its graduates are f***ed when unpredictable changes affect said industry. You want to protect grads? Then don't allow employers to write your degree program.

His view clearly that for most people Higher Ed is a waste of time. They should just rely on the really gifted like Simon himself to explain to them what's true.

The VCs say fees are so low that students cost them money, and then they try to recruit as many students as possible. So how does that work for them? They take on more students but not more staff. The only way to make a student a unit of profit (and kids, that is what you have become).

At this point, does anyone really think the REF is "accurate" (whatever that would even mean)? Preparing for it, worrying about it, gaming it takes so many resources that could be used for, well, research.

Allocate exactly the same amount of money to every department in the country according to size, and be done with it. Eliminating pointless, games-playing competition will improve research much more than absurd and corrupt "picking winners."

How do we even tolerate this for one second? What is wrong with all of us? www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

My guess is they won't be star salaries and when the US based academics see what they're in for here they either won't come or won't stay. It's actually going to be terrible PR for UK higher education.