The outpouring of grief accompanying the death of Professor Jason Arday testifies to the magnitude of his contribution both as a scholar and as a human being. Yet it is also grief propelled by a profound collective guilt of inaction. Why did so many of us fail to intervene? Why didn’t we co-ordinate a counterattack,...Read More
Words by Professor Leo McCann and Professor Simon Sweeney, University of York The sudden availability and widespread usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) have had a significant impact on university life, provoking much discussion and reflection. Many academics are turning to scholarly work on AI in their attempts to make...Read More
We would like to wish all our members and subscribers a very Happy New Year! One highlight of last year was the launch of our Code of Ethical University Governance, written by Professor Steven Jones, a member of our Executive Committee. Professor Jones launched the Code at a successful event at the House of...Read More
The ill-conceived attempt to marketise universities has been a major contributor to the current difficulties in our universities. Whatever your view of the ideology it is difficult to argue that it has been a success and the problems were foreseeable (see for example ‘English Universities in Crisis’, Frank, Gowar, Naef, Bristol University Press, 2019). Without...Read More
Since the Labour party were elected in early July to form the UK Government, I have been eagerly awaiting announcements of plans to try and fix the crisis facing British universities. Having spent the last five years researching a PhD thesis at the University of Essex which examined the relationship between political narratives of social...Read More
Words by Christopher Cunningham. Note from the author: Ideas discussed in this blog post represent a digest from my forthcoming book, which has the working title: The Neoliberal Meritocracy of Higher Education in England: Questioning a University’s Purpose through a Study of Widening Participation. Abstract In analysing the relationship between social mobility and widening...Read More
Although specific to Oxford, this blog highlights the sort of changes that are being made in university governance across the UK that reduce the role of academics. Readers aware of other examples are warmly invited to contact us and contribute to the CDBU blog. According to Statute III of the University of Oxford, Convocation consists...Read More
The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) was established at Oxford in 2012 by Sir Keith Thomas. He worked tirelessly to recruit famous names from culture and science, law and the media, as well as academe, and set up an organisational infrastructure in double quick time. Government was instituting radical plans for HE...Read More
We are pleased to publish the results of one of our funded research projects. ‘Satisfied Customers?: Interrogating “the student experience” in the neoliberal university’, by Professor Leo McCann (University of York) explores UK students’ perspectives on the marketized university. The research found that UK university students are largely enthusiastic about the content and quality of their degrees,...Read More
