Quoted on the danger of putting too much weight on TEF judgements by using them to allocate resources because it will completely undermine the TEF's already limited validity as a measure of educational quality in this @timeshighered.bsky.social piece www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/tef-so...

Nobody is more surprised than me that I'll be a keynote speaker for the Emerging Researchers' Group at the European Educational Research Association Conference in Tampere in August 2026. (Conference submissions open from the 1st of December, by the way.) eera-ecer.de/conferences/...

Interested in studying a fully online, part-time PhD in higher education? I will be hosting an applicant webinar for our HEREE programme from 17.00-18.00 (UK time) on Wed 26th November on Zoom. Register here: www.lancaster.ac.uk/social-scien...

I took a deeper look at the HEPI/Kaplan Soft Power "Index". To me what it isn't saying - what is effectively being taken for granted - is far more important and interesting than what it purportedly tells us (which is of very little real value). ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/s...

Delighted my article 'The definition of educational quality in a quasi-marketised HE system: stumbling towards a knowledge crisis' is now published open access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... & even happier it's part of a brilliant special issue edited by @jo-annebaird.bsky.social & Gemma Moss

me, @profstevenjones.bsky.social and others on the dangers of the Skills White Paper proposals for measuring and assuring the quality of education offered by HE institutions: www.timeshighereducation.com/news/risk-st...

There is still time to register for this applicant webinar this Thursday for our part-time fully online PhD in Higher Education. I look forward to seeing you there.

I'm looking forward to being part of a panel at the launch event of the Language Education Technology Research Group tomorrow. The Future of Technology in Language Education Wednesday 29 October, 2025 13:30-15:00 www.lancaster.ac.uk/confucius-in...

🎓 New publication alert 📢 Open access in British Educational Research Journal: "System failure? Exploring the interplay of fear of failure, competition, cooperation and sense of belonging in education in England and Flanders" with @carolynjackson.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/berj...

Excited to announce that the #SocMedHE25 keynote speaker will be @andytattersall! Andy will be speaking on '#AcademicTwitter Is Dead — What Died, What Survived, What’s Next?'. For more info, including the CFP and registration, see the website at: socmedhe25.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/k...

First day working in my new office, re-engaging with a paper I've not been able to work on for a few weeks for various (marking) reasons. It's not too bad, if - ahem - still 3k too long. #academicwriting #academiclife

Quoted as questioning “the wisdom of positioning a direct link between HE and the labour market,” over which HE has no control; instead universities "offer students... ways of engaging with the world that allow them to make use of the knowledge they’ve studied, to engage with the world in a new way"

Interested in studying a fully online, part-time PhD in higher education? I will be hosting an applicant webinar for our HEREE programme from 13.00-14.00 (UK time) on Thurs 30th October on Zoom. Register here: www.lancaster.ac.uk/social-scien...

Registration for #SocMedHE25 is now open! The early bird rate is £95, available until 31st October, before the standard rate of £105. We hope to see you in Lancaster! Start your registration here: socmedhe25.wordpress.com/2025/10/03/r...

BERA @BERANews Upcoming event Leadership in a Time of Monsters: Responding to Contemporary Challenges @azumahcarol 7 Oct 2025 Register here: bera.ac.uk/event/leader...

The problem with many university strategies is that they’re completely divorced from reality. Launched with fanfare, press releases and high quality videos, the people of the university mostly roll their eyes because there is no acknowledgement of the problems that need to be solved. 1/

Do you work in #HEAccess and want to know how to present more effectively in your outreach? I'm delighted to be running a one-day training session with NEON and kindly hosted by Kings College London. Sign up here. www.educationopportunities.co.uk/events/neon-...

Attended a great symposium on #decolonising today, and it's striking how equity/inclusion work in UK HE feels so precarious. In spite of the election of a (slightly?) more progressive government, budget cuts and redundancies coupled with far right resurgence make for worrying times. Thoughts?

This year, #socmedhe25 will be coming to Lancaster University, on 16th December! The call for papers/session proposals is now open at socmedhe25.wordpress.com/2025/07/16/c... - please submit abstracts by *24th October* Hope you can join us - see you in December!

Very important questions here, but the comments section is gold.

'pressures on academic freedom must also be seen as part of a broader crisis of universities' Mégret, F./Ramanujam, N. (2024): Academic Freedom in a Plural World: Global Critical Perspectives. Central European University Press. (open access) #HigherEd #AcademicFreedom www.aup.nl/en/book/9789...

🎵 Calling all primary school generalist teachers and primary music subject leaders - have your say: Primary Music Education and Digital Resources survey. 🔗Complete the survey here: app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/edgehill/u...

It's Groundhog Day as 'students don't think uni is Value for Money' starts doing the rounds again. There's so little critical reflection on what this data does (and doesn't) show. It equates HE with salaries and only salaries, for one, which is absurdly narrow.... 1/3 yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

"There exist holes within a blanket of malaise enveloping the sector that give oxygen to positive declarations of university life that confound and partially arrest a torrent of disconsolation." Open Access: doi.org/10.1080/0307...

'The purpose of higher education is not simply to hand out degrees in exchange for fees but to cultivate knowledge and skill, to educate. If universities fail to address the growing industry of deception, they risk betraying that purpose.' #HigherEd #UKHE

So many conversations with people whose communities are being im-/explicitly targeted by the UK-based flag campaign etc. It's creating real cultures of fear and changes around (shrinking) where people feel safe. If this is not when the government takes a principled stand against racism, then when?

VC's tenure represented a 'tumultuous period marked by redundancies, proposed course closures and allegations of a toxic work culture'. Hmm, feels familiar. I have a little sympathy with uni leaders, but they've often played a poor policy hand very badly. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Solidarity will colleagues north of the border. I have a strong suspicion that we'll be there soon, too. ✊

One of my @edreslancaster.bsky.social supervisees is looking at how professional services staff view university communications in times of crisis. Obviously very timely. Please share and/or have a look (and participate) if you're eligible etc. lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Linking student fees with TEF is simply unworkable for the very clear reasons that Paul Ashwin lays out here. It begs the question as to whether OfS either doesn't understand what it's doing and what HE looks like right now, or if it's posturing for future policy moves.

Lol. It's well known that TEF doesn't actually capture teaching quality, so penalising courses that don't perform well on it is like a dog chasing its own tail. Also, when the university sector is in freefall, bashing it with this stick is astonishingly tin eared.

I wonder if someone can/will do some analysis on the aftermath of UK HE's 'mini' implosion. It's almost unfathomably big and can't be captured beyond the stats of budgets and jobs. The wider losses around the arts/humanities, changed working practices, equity for students and staff, are colossal.

This piece on private schools and university access by @samfriedman.bsky.social and @aaronreeves.bsky.social is really interesting, particularly on their school numbers stats and how to level things further. Not convinced that changing acces to 'elite' universities is really the answer... 1/2

I was asked by the editor of The Geographer, the @royalscotgeosoc.bsky.social magazine, to comment on the discussion around imposing domestic student fees in Scotland. This is an online accessible version of my piece. ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/09/03/f... #academicsky #studentfees #highered

I’ve been reading a lot about AI. The promised transformation of education; the death of the university; the end of the physical teacher; the demise of the classroom. I’ve been around long enough to have heard this all before. Don’t get me wrong, I see the potential of AI. I use AI. But let’s 1/

'As a fundamentally anti-democratic and elite institutional form, philanthropy’s growing presence in higher education functions to foreclose the possibility of working toward ... institutional arrangements grounded in justice, equity, and dignity for all.' journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Our second university with the job losses today is Edinburgh Napier. What a joke this country has become. Everything it has that's good, it chooses to destroy. www.scotsman.com/education/st...

Today's university redundancies are at Edinburgh. It's obvious now that no-one will stop the madness, and it's probably too late for a big chunk of the sector anyway. news.stv.tv/east-central...

What a shock! What a surprise! To absolutely nobody. Universities' austerity logic will always have the opposite effect of what they intend. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-aust...

When you need another coffee - and want to re-hang the laundry outside because the rain has finally stopped - and one of your research assistants (whose birthday it is, incidentally) decides he needs a lapnap... #AcademicsWithCats #AcademicSky

I've written a blog on the entirely expected (and predicted) crisis that (UK) HE is in and where it's going, with three broad predictions: - Increasing Elitism - Soaring Precarity - Poorer Student Experiences Do you agree? What have I missed? #academicsky ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/l...

Good to see university architecture in the press but it's also worth bearing in mind that: - Award-winning designs and overbuilding have created debt issues we're now paying dearly for; - Post-occupancy evaluations of how/if new buildings/campuses work are rare. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Email - dispelling the myth that nothing happens in universities over the summer. I've only been away for two weeks... #academicsky #backtowork #academiclife #inbox

'To a great extent, it appears, our crisis of the humanities is a crisis of academic leadership — a crisis of will, not capacity.' #HigherEd

Goodbye to D27, my on-off LU home for the past six years. We're all being shunted around - mostly into shared offices - as part of the grand faculty reorganisation/cost cutting/interdisciplinary master plan (delete as appropriate). My daughter did leave a message for the new incumbent-/s...

It's only 'plunging demand' due to progressive governments narrow mindedly aligning the value of a degree with earnings and imposing a disastrous funding model underpinned by that logic.

And yet these will be the key subjects as creativity, empathy and critical thinking become the most important facets of living in an automated world. We have got almost everything about post-16 education wrong. We need to go back to the beginning. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

Colour me shocked: a Guardian UKHE piece which isn't awful. The current system only "works" because staff are underpaid and overworked, and students exploited. How mass redundancies and £300 more per UK student are going to solve this conundrum is anyone's guess. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is policy is absurd, and this article is absurd. How can you write about levying fees around international students while ignoring the fact that the UK HE is in freefall, in part due to already dreadful funding policy. Tax the rich, not struggling HEIs. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Our paper on clusters of schools across the UK is out. We find five clusters: multi-racial & super-diverse middle & working-class schools of towns & cities, suburban white middle class schools, established elite schools & (post-)industrial white working class schools. doi.org/10.1002/berj...