Professor Jo Wolff goes hunting for positive remarks from Jo Johnson about universities – and offers some advice to successor Sam Gyimah ‘Farewell unis and science’, tweeted Jo Johnson, channelling Private Eye’s E.J. Thribb. Academics were astonished by such an honest statement of government policy. Relief flooded in when it was realised that it was...Read More

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text] Professor DVM Bishop bids a not-so-fond farewell to universities minister Jo Johnson. So Jo Johnson is gone, brought down by poor judgement demonstrated by, first, the appointment of Toby Young to the Board of the Office for Students, and second by his obstinacy in defending that decision to the bitter end. The...Read More

Opinion piece by Dorothy Bishop The Higher Education and Research Bill (HERB) has had a rocky passage through parliament. As explained here, a Bill goes through several stages before it becomes law, with debate in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well as Committee work that involves detailed line-by-line scrutiny...Read More

Opinion piece by James Ladyman It is said that trust in institutions is in short supply these days. Sadly the government doesn’t trust universities. According to the Minister, the Higher Education and Research Bill is necessary to “break open a closed shop that for too long has set the rules of the game in its...Read More

Opinion piece by Dorothy Bishop Earlier this week, Lord Patten, former Conservative chairman, published a searing attack on the government’s Higher Education and Research Bill in the Observer, stating: “It seems ham-fisted to turn the academic world upside down when universities face so much turbulence and uncertainty after the Brexit vote and the rhetoric surrounding...Read More

No. 5 in a series of guest posts by G. R. Evans One of the most significant regulatory changes introduced by the Bill is the decisive separation of research done by a research-active higher education provider in England from its ‘educational’ or teaching work. This has now been reinforced by the decision to move teaching...Read More