9 février 2014

By Mel Rohse and Dean D'Souza. From setting up job alerts and meeting with academics to tutoring schoolchildren, Mel and Dean say it's not for lack of trying that they haven't secured an academic job. Securing employment is becoming increasingly difficult. But there are at least two routes to a postdoctoral research career. The first is to develop a research proposal and then seek funding for it. The advantage of this option is that you can seek answers to questions that you thought about during your PhD training but never had the time to pursue. More...

By Steve Joy. Here's the truth: interviews may be terrifying, but they are also predictable. Steve Joy shares his top tips. Many dread going to job interviews. Yet it is a fact not often acknowledged that interviews are pretty predictable. You can prepare for them without feeling as if you are submitting to a dark ritual in the face of which passive acceptance is the only option. More...

By Anonymous academic. Evangelical students cannot tolerate diversity of opinion and resist secular critiques of their views. My job is no longer the joy it once was. I'm a senior academic in a religion department at a Russell Group university. Before you ask, no, we're not training would-be vicars. And no, we're not in the business of promoting particular faiths. More...

By Helen Whitehouse. Not all students are ready for university. A student blogger shares her experience of dropping out, and starting uni afresh. In September last year I started university, expecting to be a student for another three years. But, come mid November, I did something out of character – I dropped out. More...

By Natasha Slee. After a BA in film, Freya Jewitt changed direction with her MA, following her love of museums and galleries. Before Freya Jewitt applied to study an MA in art gallery and museum studies at the University of Leeds, she emailed everyone she knew who worked in galleries and asked: "is it worth it?"
"I got a 50/50 response," Jewitt says. "An MA is good, but equally you could spend a year getting experience, they said." More...

By Claire Shaw. Sponsored Q&A: Join our live chat 7 February on how to cut costs without damaging the university experience. As the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announces reductions to spending in 2014-15, universities are looking for new and innovative ways to save money. For many, this has meant outsourcing campus services, including catering and facilities management. More...

By Jeff Selingo. Tuition resets—essentially, slashing the sticker price of tuition to the discounted price most students pay anyway—have become a popular public-relations stunt recently for a few colleges that are trying to reframe the conversation about the rising cost of higher ed and, most important, to help them fill their classroom seats and dorms. More...

By David J. Leonard. Not a day passes without my questioning my abilities: as a writer, a commentator, and—most of all—as an academic. I wonder if I have talent, or am I just faking it?
Despite those insecurities, I don’t feel like an impostor. On paper, I fit the profile of an academic. I am a white male. I trod a typical school-to-university path that—in addition to providing ample opportunities and advantages—normalized becoming an academic. I have been taught over and over again that my identity fits that of a scholar. More...

By George Williams. At the beginning of last month, I asked ProfHacker readers to share their favorite apps for the new year, and there are many great contributions in the comments section of that post. Lately, I’ve been talking with my campus colleagues about ways to use the iPad in the classroom. More...