Richard Carr

Every decade, university administrators excite themselves over the prospects of firing all the faculty and 95% of the staff.

Early 2020s: LLMs
Early 2010s: MOOCs
Early 2000s: Wikis

We've imbued it with something and I'm being a little OTT here given it does rely on newer sources, but also, it is still just research

Why is the dissertation necessarily different anyway? Feels slightly arbitrary. I mean if they want to do some mad research for an essay they...just can, I guess?

This is another layer, absolutely. Being asked layers of "heck if I know" questions that are seven years downstream from a thinkpiece on WonkHE.

And ofc, this is starting to bite more as staff numbers dwindle and the projects I am nominally running the rule over move further and further away from anything I'm even tangentially knowledgeable on. Absurd.

Maybe this is repressed trauma for the volume of mandatory online trainings lecturers have, sure. But if I can root out terrorism or something through using them then a 21 year old can do a survey of students on local housing provision, it's fine.

I get the need for unis to cover their back against a student doing something mad but a) you can't actually do that, they are adults and b) we do research methods throughout the course. They hate them, but we do them. We've covered the general points. Add online course. Supervisor advice. LFG.

All these dissertations will be great - interesting topics (albeit ones I know nothing about). But, like with the REF and a bunch of other issues, academia just cannot do light touch. It just can't.

The academic dream is trying to think up advice on question 17b of a form you don't respect or see the point of, always said it.

I'll be honest, I'd question what an undergraduate dissertation ethics system with two seemingly parallel and confusing processes that leads to, say, me assessing the viability of theses on contemporary pastoral communities in Burundi is adding to anything. But it's a process!

To be honest "the academia" is trying to think of puns involving "Bankers ramp"

"The academia" has some concerns about this framing

"The markets" is obviously a blancmange of different elements and institutions - I guess a trifle? - but the amount of soothsayers willing to speak in its name is quite weird. It's like when Chris Mason writes about the vibe of a particular political conference.

Quotes from an interview with former Newcastle/Liverpool footballer Jonjo Shelvey: "I'm not massive on reading politics," Shelvey said. "I just see some of the things that go on. "I see people getting arrested for tweeting and, then, all of the flags and 'taking back the country'. "I'm not going to sit here and comment on things like that because I'm not clever enough to, and I'll get myself into trouble if I carry on, but I just feel that the UK isn't what it was 10 to 15 years ago."

Jonjo Shelvey is the last guy in the trenches for the Cameron-Clegg coalition

With the discount it actually drops below the crucial £1 per a thousand words point mind

A student very sweetly said they liked this book but the price (obviously correctly) was ludicrous. I started going into a whole thing about the academic book market, then segued into a "well, there'll be a cheaper paperback...I mean...still £40...in 12 months time....", and then just laughed really

London, please do this

It’s really great and this award is just very fully deserved

Really sorry, horrendous

What HE managers fail to understand is that in the context of the Humanities, ‘employability’ isn’t teaching coding or carpentry, but skills around writing, presenting, reasoning, evaluation, analysis, research etc. In an 80% service economy, these are the skills that fundamentally matter.

The Professor Will See You Now: Opposition Lessons in political science. This week: opposition

Latest article in @thehousemag.bsky.social - on opposition. What % of government bills do you think are opposed in full by the opposition? That is, what % see the opposition vote against at second and/or third reading?

www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

CfP: The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research To commemorate the centenary of the British General Strike and miners’ lock-out, Newcastle University’s Labour & Society Research Group (LSRG) is organising a conference that revisits the…

CfP: The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research, 7-8 May 2026 @newcastleuni.bsky.social
Deadline: 6 February 2026

More details:
@sslh.bsky.social

sslh.org.uk/2025/10/13/c...

sslh.org.uk/wp-content/u...
Kindly supported by @leverhulme.ac.uk

#GeneralStrike1926 #GeneralStrike100

I think this was the sixth pledge

Didn’t happen under Rishi

On a train that is delayed because there are horses on the train track #brokenbritain

Faith in cats ‘at new low’ as bird numbers tick up

The LLM absolutely promising to do all that

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing? 2? Questions I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up. Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

A typically ludicrous tweet from Konstantin Kisin: “It's time for people with Trump Derangement Syndrome to admit they were wrong.”

Didn’t turn up for work for four years. 18 month bender in the middle. Embezzled the UK university sector out of £4 billion in the process. Only returned to campus when I was allowed to wear a cape and crown constantly.

My supporters when I dropped the Neighbours article: