we are all just numbers on a spreadsheet full of errors now

Visiting my university’s new, expensively-refurbished space for startup incubators and senior management and cannot imagine a better illustration of the American university at this moment in time than a breathlessly press-released “collaboration room” featuring a single desk and chair.

My point isn’t to fear it or embrace it, just that it is wild how unaware western trained academics are of our increasing provincialism in the greater world of scholarship. The days of non western academics needing to dutifully cite critical theory are long gone.

If I've learned nothing else about myself and my work over the years is that if I'm not interested in it, the work simply isn't going to happen. I guess I'm just not cut out to tell people how to use AI in their work because I have no interest in using it for my work.

British Academy President's statement on the UK's higher education crisis, July 2026.

I'm an elected member of Edinburgh's Senate Quality Assurance Committee. So I was alarmed to learn through the news media that a significant number of dissertations may have been marked by anonymous external markers and that the relevant exam boards' concerns about this may have been bypassed.

I'm an elected member of Edinburgh's Senate Quality Assurance Committee. So I was alarmed to learn through the news media that a significant number of dissertations may have been marked by anonymous external markers and that the relevant exam boards' concerns about this may have been bypassed.

The Edinburgh Joint Unions Financial Working Group has done an excellent job of going through the university's reports, finding that there's a sizeable surplus, management is using misleading metrics, and spending on buildings is *still* growing www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/ju-finance-w...

At today's UKRI board meeting, the fate of UK particle physics and astronomy will likely be decided. Have we done enough to convince the powers-that-be to halt the proposed funding cuts? 🤞 Read Prof. Hiranya Peiris in Nature today eloquently explaining why these cuts are wrong.🧪🔭⚛️ 📖: rdcu.be/friwM

A depressingly long list of universities who are implementing cuts and redundancies, as well as the petitions and actions against them (via @onslies.bsky.social) qmucu.org/qmul-transfo.... This is a national emergency that should be responded to with national policy.

here you go (art was better than doomscrolling)

quiz: what university "cost saving" move is this post about?

You can't take a coherent academic discipline, with its own structure and means of enquiry, and reduce it to a vending machine out of which the relevant gobbets of expertise emerge when you press a button. I know heroic people who teach in service departments, and it's soul-dissolving work.

I've now seen the management proposals for maths at Dundee. Basically: shutter the UG degrees; lose 3FTE (on a headcount of 16); maths continues "as a discipline" but only for service teaching, "interdisciplinary contribution" and MScs including, inevitably, one in AI.

Russell Group membership is limited to research-intensive universities (typically a 40-40-20 contract). If one cuts research allocation from 40 to 10%, it is categorically no longer a research intensive university.

Lots of us pointing out the unsupervised algorithmic decision & $39.95 charged for blank page that says, “This article has been withdrawn due to article violation.” But Springer Nature also killed an editorial that the editor-in-chief of Naturwissenschaften planned to write about the retractions.

I wish UCU would actually push some cases of fake redundancy to court. Our own plan is to leave 3 people to do all the teaching. Next year that would be 37.5 hours in class alone each - the full week, without doing any preparation, research, marking etc. That’s not a real redundancy situation.

Truly bizarre story of how two papers from the 1940s by physics pioneer Max Planck have been "retracted" from Naturwissenschaften, potentially by an algorithm, for anachronistic "plagiarism" issues, leaving the current editor baffled (but it is Springer Nature so.... www.science.org/content/arti...

You already see it in how people have clocked out. Universities used to be run on an inordinate amount of goodwill. Yes, the unhealthy kind that meant people bent over backwards in things they should be properly remunerated for, but also more broadly in collegiality and turning up. Eroded now.

Exeter has a phenomenal track record of literary studies research AND enrollment. The unbundling of the two will sabotage them both. And that is by design. The fewer research-intensive humanities departments there are, this thinking goes, the easier it will be to censor what they produce.

the traditions of autonomous specialisms that have sustained universities for centuries actually seems to offend the groupthinkers that have been given the reigns of late

We are literally told we are going to be doing less with less. They seem very pleased with themselves about this honesty, except no-one knows what we’re allowed to stop doing. (The only real thing so far is PhD supervision of any kind, as between local cuts and UKRI ‘reforms’ there’s zero funding.)

yup... But that's the thing with consultants: they don't carry the risk. They take their transactional fee & are out. They might come back for the next fee in a couple of months, and if they have created enough chaos & dependency (with much institutional knowledge gone), then that's more guaranteed.

'In an email sent to staff last week, principal Sir Peter Mathieson and provost Kim Graham said that the university has an operating surplus of £16m.' Nothing ideological to see here.

🎉 The 2026 BSHS Pickstone Prize panel also Highly Commended two outstanding books: 📘 @tulaneu.bsky.social Lab Dog: What Global Science Owes American Beagles 📗 @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction Check them out and have a look at our shortlist! 🔗 buff.ly/EtCVxUz

🏆 We're delighted to announce the winner of the 2026 BSHS Pickstone Prize! Congratulations to David Singerman, whose book Unrefined has been awarded this year's prize! Check out the judging panel's decision and more on our website! 🔗https://bshs.org.uk/the-bshs-pickstone-prize-2026-winner/

Each uni has a consultancy in that tells them how to run a degree cheaply. They all simply say 'mega lectures' (LOL, infrastructure) & 'generic modules staff is interchangeable on'. It's pitched as rationalising, creating a 'sustainable' portfolio. But its destroying what university actually is.

It’s wild that politicians don’t seem to grasp the degree to which universities contribute to the economy- local, regional, national. The failure to intervene is a stain on this govt - a shocking dereliction of duty to every worker, every local business, every student, every area that is suffering

the media and voter messaging should be this: the current government and the government in waiting do not want your children to be able to go to university, they will not support people in the UK to do original research, they do not care about job losses in one of the largest sectors in the economy

It's rare that a newspaper says this out loud.

Two semesters in a row I stepped in to teach modules at the last minute due to absences, on the promise of reduced schedules in the next academic year which never materialised. The pay document refers to time off or payment where workload is already agreed, so it’s time to test it.

Alright all, it's that time: if you've ever taught my work, would you be so kind as to DM me with details? I (and my tenure file) appreciate it!

Hi @ukri.org I see the minutes are back up, but have been modified. Dec 2025 Item 3.1 previously read: (1/n)

This NLS exhibition about Rain and Scotland will be open during the #ESHS-HSS meeting. NB The article notes that Edinburgh is one of the UK's drier cities (but we make no promises for July!) #histSTM

"how the wave story subsequently propagated" *chefskiss*

The email also instructs me tactfully to engage in relentless self-promotion, and since that's basically what the article's about, here is a final final plug for it. doi.org/10.1080/0003... (Regular readers are excused.)

Can anyone recommend a brief guide/primer to REF that explains the system to international people applying to UK academic jobs? I know of official guides but I’d like something tailored to people not already here, and which covers the essential, but important, tacit knowledge. Thanks for any help.

*ahem* important, too

The *ahem* interesting results were: 1) Lots of different things are described by mathematicians as interesting or important. Crucially, the philosophers' favourites (definitions, theorems, proofs) were not really the main ones.

Books on analog paper info spinners (volvelles) acquired. Erik Johnson's "My life in arcs: adjustable round charts & volvelles"; Jessica Helfand's "Reinventing the Wheel".

✊ Solidarity with University of Edinburgh staff taking action for better conditions, and with everyone organising, supporting each other and refusing to be divided.

Banning big box consultancies would automatically put hundreds of millions back into the coffers. It would be the single-handed largest savings. Here are some eye-watering figures from down under. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

I wrote a new post about the privacy risks of on-phone agents like Apple’s new Siri, and how private inference isn’t any sort of silver bullet. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/06/09/a...

With the ESHS/HSS conference in Edinburgh coming up, check out curiousedinburgh.org, a walking tour app developed by the University of Edinburgh to guide you through the Athens of the North! From the History of Public Health to the Women in STEM Art Trail - there's something for everyone!

What's it actually feel like to live through the decline and fall of mass Higher Education in Britain? Today I've written about this from the inside here... Hope you like it, and hope you find it useful. isrf.org/blog/what-do...

We cannot expect accurate renderings of education from a magazine owned by a media conglomerate owned by a private equity firm deeply invested in EdTech. That is, The New Yorker. Nor from a magazine owned by a venture capital fund deeply invested in EdTech. That is, The Atlantic.

Every staff update in every university right now: 1. We are excited to announce a strategic investment of eleventeen squillion pounds in ACRONYM, a new AI-powered centre for the development of strategic acronyms. 2. Staff have until Friday to apply for enhanced Voluntary Death.

Edinburgh has a budget surplus

Latest unhinged leadership decision from UoE. (Remember: this is an institution that isn't even running a deficit, but has somehow decided that the route to security involves declaring war on itself.)

It's not wholly unprecedented for institutions to refuse to accept "partial performance" and withhold all pay from staff who take part in a marking boycott. But I don't think I've heard one suggest that they might also withhold pay from non-striking staff who don't take on extra work.