Opinion

A ban on abortion clinics’ use of university-affiliated doctors is a barefaced interference in universities’ hiring decisions, says Edward Halperin

The publication of three Nature papers demonstrates that money is no substitute for good ideas, open science and collaboration, says Andrea Morello

Classroom skills that previously came naturally to lecturers and students can become very rusty in the online environment, says Christopher Hallenbrook 

Kick-starting a conversation on national funding levels is useful, but collaboration on frontier-led research needs attention, says Jan Palmowski

Universities are autonomous in principle but their financial reliance on the state means conflict is inevitable – and suppression is a very real threat

The Oxford college’s vast expenditure of charitable funds to try to dislodge its own dean could have serious repercussions, says Alan Rusbridger

Reskilling may help workers feed their families – but a plateful of modules may not add up to a square educational meal, warns Johnny Rich

Higher education must acknowledge the extra workload that comes with higher education in the digital era, says Christopher Schaberg

Marketing claims are often empty, unaccompanied by comprehensive policies, plans, timetables or evaluation criteria, says Harvey Graff

Adapting and adopting US approaches to commercialisation offer an opportunity for the UK, says Chris Loryman

Without it, we could lose sight of the subtleties of the sliding scale of disadvantage and its impact on participation, says Jayne Taylor

Perhaps it is only by recasting an agreement as an adventure that professors can respond to the urgency of our times, says Robert Zaretsky

Higher education must double down on the liberal education values of interdisciplinarity, experiential learning and critical thinking, says Eric Skipper

The UK minister’s demand that universities stick to face-to-face lectures is a step backwards for education, says Wendy Garnham

If the English regulator agrees to tear up universities’ current access plans it risks undermining any perception of autonomy, says Geoffrey Alderman

Robbert Dijkgraaf's appointment to the Netherlands’ new government has got academics very excited, says Michèle Wera

With concerted efforts, the UK could attract far more than 600,000 international students to its shores, says James Pitman

Hong Kong University’s legally dubious dismantling of the monument to Tiananmen Square should provoke global outrage, says Phil C.W. Chan

Pushing the ARC to focus on commercialisation neglects the complex interdependency between basic and applied research, says Duncan Ivison

The pandemic may just push US colleges and universities to do what they should have done a long time ago: reorganise, says Michael Hadjiargyrou

Higher education looks to be beset by any number of challenges in 2022, not least more Covid disruption. Resilience may again be the year’s watchword

The pandemic has demonstrated that there are broad deficiencies in quantitative reasoning skills even within the academy, says David Sanders

Privileging one set of subjects with a catchy acronym may once have served a purpose, but that has long since been outlived, says Andy Miah 

Enlisting miscreants to help improve understanding of contract cheating, as part of their punishment, could be a way forward, says Kholah Yaruq Malik

UK higher education is in robust shape, but it must be willing to build multiple bridges in 2022, says David Bell

Despite the pandemic, trade disputes and geopolitical tensions, several factors will continue to push and pull Chinese students abroad, says Nicolas Chu

Higher education in continental Europe needs to overcome its prejudices about DBAs if it is to meet demand from today’s senior managers, says Michel Kalika

Networks such as Universitas 21 facilitate mutual support to meet net zero targets, say Tan Eng Chye and Anton Muscatelli

After a second year of social distancing, how strong are the ties that bind us together and what is it that makes us a community, in society and HE?

The escalating pressures of university life are resulting in all manner of exotic new psychological disorders. Adrian Furnham opens his casebook

Unclear guidelines, screen-tanned conspiracy theorists and government party animals: none of them is helping campus security, says George Bass

Funding for green campuses, levelling up and international links would be a gift from Santa Rishi Sunak to himself, too, says Nick Isles

UK higher education says it wants diversity, but its treatment of early career researchers suggests otherwise, says Edda Nicolson

The Taliban’s professed support for higher education has not been matched by their actions so far, says Rahmatullah Katawazai

Persuasion is everywhere, but universities could do a public service by communicating the messy, uncertain truth more widely, says Michael Blastland

They helped create the problems we face. Now business schools should be fundamentally reimagined as democratic institutions, says Carl Rhodes

Australian universities’ ongoing embrace of digital approaches is cheapening learning – but not in a good way, says Binoy Kampmark

The Florida governor’s control over the make-up of public universities’ boards makes recent controversies unsurprising, says Mei Lan Frame

The financial effects of Covid may cause disadvantaged college applicants to panic, unclear how to apply for aid or too ashamed to do so, says Amy Glynn

Emily Shuckburgh and Alyssa Gilbert, co-chairs of the COP26 Universities Network, draw the lessons from two years of collective effort

Deep cuts may be reversed, but the Brazilian president’s anti-science rhetoric will do lasting damage, says John Aubrey Douglass

As competition for international students grows more intense and complex, the traditional anglophone giants face a host of new challenges

Diversifying income stream also makes institutions less exposed to possible government cuts, say Ian Matthias and Mike Boxall

Studying institutional success stories is socially useful and has nothing to do with selling out, say Matthew Flinders and Paul ’t Hart

Scrutiny of graduate outcomes is appropriate but the issue is much more complex than arts v science, says Anna Vignoles

Mediocre but arrogant academics who appropriate successful projects are a threat to education and collegiality, says Manuel Freire-Garabal 

Negative connotations attached to ‘liberal’ and ‘arts’ have created a misleading perception of a transformative education model that delivers for students, say Barbara Altmann and Jeffrey Nesteruk

The effects of gentrification and displacement as neighbourhoods are transformed into vibrant hubs of creativity shouldn’t be ignored, says Costas Spirou

The silence of other universities about an apparent clampdown on lawful speech is a betrayal of their mission, says Jonathan Rosenhead

Amid another round of strikes, the pension scheme chair’s assertion that changes are unavoidable cannot stand unchallenged, says Neil Davies

Both dropout rates and attainment have held steady since Abertay radically reduced entry grades for disadvantaged applicants, says Nigel Seaton

The country’s conservative government is wary of academia’s social influence and values, but a ministerial letter offers hope, says Agnieszka Piotrowska

Both researchers and journalists should adopt a more agnostic lens when confronted with novel findings, says Anne-Laure Sellier

The UK’s whole-genome sequencing project could spark a global step change in the treatment of rare diseases, says Damian Smedley

More training, greater recognition and a wider geographical purview would help expand the reviewer pool, says Miriam Maus

The latest USS valuation may have been conducted amid crashing markets, but there is no escaping the need for changes, says Kate Barker

The abolition of publishers and the bypassing of Big Tech is a prerequisite for maximising the power of science, says Andy Farnell

High levels of personal optimism block decisions to depart a dysfunctional workplace or halt a failing project, say Alexander Clark and Bailey Sousa

A group of undergraduates who got together to build a racing car taught Nic Smith how much horsepower there is in community

Both industry and academia in New Zealand need people who can look past traditional subject boundaries, says Catherine Whitby