I was intrigued to read this story in the Times Higher Education about Dutch academics complaining about having to work “structural unpaid overtime” of 12-15 hours per week, which this report says is 36% above their regular paid hours. More...
Nestor, the king of sandy Pylos, is the grand old man of The Iliad. He has seen the passing of two generations of mankind and is living with the third so that he is short neither of wisdom, nor of tales to tell nor of the willingness to tell them, at considerable length.
Sometimes I feel that I am becoming Nestor: the fact that I think in these terms is proof in itself of Megan Bowler’s thesis that the study of languages enriches our life’s experience. After all, I learnt Latin and French – a little – in the 1960s, Latin and Greek – a lot – in the 1970s, taught Latin and Greek – a lot – in the 1980s and 1990s and, in the 21st century, was head of two independent schools where language provision was of central significance. And, whereas Nestor had two sons, I have three, of whom two studied languages at university and, of these two, one has become a teacher of French in a Birmingham grammar school and the other is working with Syrian refugees in Coventry. Part of that work entails the teaching of English. And next Monday I make my debut as a teacher of English to refugees in Birmingham. That’s seven decades of labouring in the linguistic vineyard and that’s easily three generations. More...
It is often said that higher education has big benefits for individuals and for society, so it should be financed by taxpayers sufficient to cover the public benefits.
This has been summarised in the Times Higher as follows:
For the most part, students, like policymakers, are preoccupied with the question of who benefits from a university education, and whether these benefits can be quantified in any meaningful way, or translated into a “fair” ratio of public to private funding.
An old HEPI report, which argues the UK should learn from Australia, concludes:
Evidence would suggest that a 50:50 balance of public: private contribution may achieve something close to optimum economic efficiency.
The many changes to student funding in England over the past 20-odd years have created a system in which it is thought that taxpayers cover around 45% of the costs and students / graduates around 55%. More...
While there are always plenty of topics to be grappling with in higher education, there tends to be one issue that dominates the discussion. For 2019 this was the Augar review, despite the fact the independent panel was originally due to report in 2018. Throughout the year those of us working in higher education considered the impact of the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) decision to change the accounting rule around student loans, speculated on the rumoured changes such as removing student loans for those with less than 3 Ds at A-level, pored over the report and then waited to see whether the Government would pick up the recommendations. More...
In a time of increasing uncertainty and public scrutiny, higher education is facing an unprecedented challenge to articulate value to both stakeholders and society. So it is paramount that leaders take a rounded and innovative approach to understanding value, and that this is implemented across institutions and throughout our sector in strategy, operations and communication. More...
As a graduate entrepreneur who has recently entered the digital technology sector, I am thrilled by the opportunities on offer, especially for international students like me with flexible visa options. If I had known about the opportunities earlier, it would have helped me make better career choices. More...
Every year, HEPI starts our annual programme of events with three parliamentary breakfast seminars, co-hosted with our Partner organisation Advance HE and kindly sponsored for many years by the long-standing Labour MP Barry Sheerman. More...
One year ago today we received ministerial approval for the designation of a new subsidiary, South Bank Colleges (SBC), to deliver further education. That same day, Lambeth College in south London merged with SBC, becoming part of the London South Bank University (LSBU) Group. More...
A new collection of essays published by the Higher Education Policy Institute entitled Social Mobility and Higher Education: Are grammar schools the answer? (HEPI Occasional Paper 22) looks at the latest evidence on academic selection. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Emergence Is Coupled to Scope, Not Level
Very nice paper (PDF). Some really good observations, including:
- that emergence should be defined by scope rather than level (in my own work I have described it by levels, and not really considered defining it as anything) - and of drawing the distinction (last paragraph) between global and local scopes
- the question of whether emergence is a perceptual (or epistemic) property (ie., 'recognition') as I have defined it, or whether it is an ontologically 'real' property - this paper takes a broad position that it is ontological, but I don't agree with the argument ("Naissance emergence is an ontological concept, since in light of the preceding discussion it cannot be epistemic.")
- that the limitation of mathematical models of emergence is the lack of entropy (which restricts the number of possibilities) - I would contrast this with (mathematical) discussions of scale-free networks
- the description of the phenomenon of 'scaling'. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
