Message for the media
"Research for the purpose of the RAE is to be understood as original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding." Definition for 1996 research assessment exercise. Question...
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Time for the end of the peer show?
Last November The THES published an anonymous article on peer review. Its three authors, collectively dubbed "John Smith", called for an end to the grip of the old boys' club on the award of research...
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Peer review needs youth and clarity
The need for a modernised, more anonymous process of application for research funds was recently advocated on these pages. Here, Richard Brook defends the present system but calls for key refinements...
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Originality in the east
WANG Gungwu wrote thoughtfully about the type of degrees which will best suit the universities of Southeast Asia ("Breadth and the Powerful", THES, December 26) and ended by suggesting that damage...
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Lecturing school days
FOR aspiring young lecturers in higher education the push for training and accreditation could have an unwelcome consequence. Universities normally appoint people who have finished or nearly finished...
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Truth and the nativity
YOUR article on the nativity stories (Perspective, THES, December 19) suffered from its attempt to interpret the views of theologians in terms of the modern/postmodern debate. There is nothing...
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Therapists in demand
I commend Martin Davies's call for the government to revise the structure of social work training (THES, January 2), but I dispute his ill-informed comment about "leaving the majority of work with...
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Pounds 500 for a sandwich
SO, IF we are all agreed - the students, their teachers, their bank managers, employers, Sir Ron Dearing and the government - that sandwich training should be supported and encouraged, why charge...
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Job jitters can get you
I AM NOT reassured by Simon Burgess's work on the lifespan of jobs (THES, December 26). It may be that our fears of job insecurity are excessive and that we need the kind of warning that you get from...
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Bustle at the library
I WAS sorry to read Mr Obelkevich's letter (THES, December 19) complaining about noise in the British Library's new reading rooms. The reading rooms were indeed very busy during the opening period...
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Passionate argument
A BOOK review ought at least to outline the premise of the book under review and give a reasoned appraisal. Andrea Dworkin's distorted and polemical review of my book Ruling Passions: Sexual Violence...
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The quality buck stops here
GEOFFREY Alderman's amusing misrepresentation of the purposes and outcomes of the Quality Assurance Agency's "continuation" and overseas audit programmes (THES, December 26) cannot go unremarked. The...
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Don's diary
Monday Approval of my application for sabbatical. Sabbatical is now called study leave. We have not found a three-letter acronym (TLA) for it yet. By the miracle of peer review, that cornerstone of...
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Date rape: are we going too far?
A RECENT television drama has kept date rape a live issue for students, their universities and the public. Last year a 22-year-old Oxford University student was jailed for a year after he had...
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Charge for the bright brigade
AUSTRALIAN universities have been reeling from a series of shocks to the system over the past 18 months, most of which relate to changes in the method of financing higher education. Given the...