www.ft.com/content/7144... another thing that makes moving to the UK difficult and should be removed ASAP - simply does not make sense

‘Economics Nobel prize won by researchers who showed how science boosts growth’ by @philipcball.bsky.social in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Destroying UK HE through completely backwards policies that perpetuate a death spiral for the sector is not novel, though. It's the endgame for two decades of erosion and implosion.

@dabiophysicist.bsky.social I just found a news-and-views article about the Aldrich lab's classic work on Shaker K+ channel inactivation. An *amazing* snapshot-in-time, in the pre-structural era but with everyone knowing it's only a matter of time. What an amazing piece of science reporting!

And before 'austerity', HE was one of our world-leading (almost world-*defining*) sectors; raising fees, cutting funding, imposing the disastrous REF regimen, and redefining HE as employment preparation has utterly eviscerated the core ethos and role of our universities.

UK Universities cut 12,000 jobs, more on the way. 40% of Unis in financial crisis. Major exporter destroyed by successive govts Obstacles for foreign students. Low fees in England, lack of govt funding. £267bn student debt. Home student numbers down. How will the UK compete with other nations?

Dear Dr. Kopec, I hereby confirm the receipt of your application for the vacancy Junior Professorship with Tenure Track in Theoretical Chemistry. Due to our experience it will take usually about one year to reach a final decision on the offered position. Found in old emails. Apply early folks 😀

Curbing ‘unfunded’ research ‘could chase away academics’. Researchers wary of signals from senior figures that universities “can’t afford” research without external funding. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Supervising project students in the UK - here are your data, research plan, meetings scheduled week by week, marking sheets and examples from last 5 years Supervising project students in Eastern Europe - i just read about this new theory, it is now your topic, see you in 6 months

Science Funders > we want you to do research that challenges the current understanding of life Also science funders > we will give you one postdoc for 2 years

A brilliant piece in the FT about the human and institutional cost of overreliance on international student fees. Managers are making our most vulnerable students pay the price of a failing funding model and are skewing the purposes of university in their pursuit of fees. www.ft.com/content/3f49...

Managers should admit the funding model doesn't work and join in advocating for change, not push the pain and risk onto our most vulnerable students and change universities beyond recognition. Or making institutions beholden to agents, taking the future hostage. www.ft.com/content/3f49...

UK Universities desperately need support from our government. Education should be free for everyone. Education is not a business. Education is key for a strong economy. Education is important for everyone's life and well-being. #Solidarity with @uonucu.bsky.social

“£230bn saving” 🙄 If you issue your own currency, you don’t “fund” the NHS by shrinking the population - you need the real capacity. Migrants add tax, fill critical roles, and face limited benefits access. The constraint isn’t a debt figure; it’s having enough nurses, carers, teachers and builders.

Excellent piece on basic income for the arts by Mick Gallen. One of the most talented and hardest working artists I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Amazing to read what the scheme did for him. www.thejournal.ie/readme/opini...

Really helpful post here about the upcoming ballot which you'll have seen an email about on Monday. #WeAreTheUniversity - vote yes to: ▶️protect jobs and prevent cuts ▶️defend the agreements that support our work ▶️demand a pay uplift.

It's welcome week and I'm on strike (again) over the University of Edinburgh's refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies. UoE has no deficit, but cuts of £90 million are already underway, damaging teaching, research, and the future of education at our university.

Science Secretary Peter Kyle very clear today: 'too many universities are competing for the same pool of students'. He wants much more 'co-operation' (AKA merger) and unis narrowing down to their individual strengths. You have been warned. www.gov.uk/government/s...

New preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We used molecular dynamics simulations and solid-state NMR (@fmp-berlin.de) to look at calcium binding to the pore domain of the calcium-gated K+ channel MthK. @wojciechkopec.bsky.social @compbiophys.bsky.social

9 in 10 students are struggling to afford rent and food… Yet former universities minister Jo Johnson says it’s “perverse” to complain about tuition fee rises 😱 Read our report: tr.ee/wAdLcJ

Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH Director, thinks that if science isn’t popular it should be abandoned. “No matter how elegant the science, a platform that lacks credibility among the people it seeks to protect cannot fulfill its public health mission”. He is unfit for his job in every imaginable way.

Very few people seem to understand university finances and, distressingly, this includes many academics and most policymakers. This is an attempt to condense the key points you need to know. open.substack.com/pub/profseri...

Good read: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The British university mess is so clearly what happens when the incentives of the people administering and consulting on the system bear no relation to those of anyone actually working in it

PhD studentship in London with 880 GBP monthly stipend. Dear Lord Almighty

now google each of those six universities and “redundancies”

Or better still: remove the perverse incentive that makes universities throw all their money into marketing to try to grab a couple of student fees from other universities, and put in place some student number redistribution and planning. Then those fees could go to teaching & research, not Mammoth.

Have I got my predictions right about the disaster in British Higher Ed? Take a look at this from 2023. As I've said to the Commons Education Committee, experts who've nailed it should now get a turn and replace Willetts and Osborne-style advisers who got it all wrong. www.ft.com/content/2f46...

Government and society can’t insist on the financial independence of universities and then complain in shock when strategic courses or departments are shuttered because they hurt the finances and no more public funding is forthcoming.

I still can’t believe that all NIH grants to my colleagues at Harvard and Harvard Medical School have been nullified. And that, as a nation, we’re somehow okay with this illegal, arbitrary, and petty act. Just think of the consequences: scientists, students, and patients will all suffer.

Big employability has convinced a generation of decision makers/students that there’s a series of bitesize specific #lifehacks inherent in degree level study that they’ve added. But it’s always been about the journey of gaining competence/mastery of a subject and the things you develop along the way

Interestingly *Research-led-teaching* seems to be precisely the thing that senior managers are targeting. Whether that’s by cutting programmes and making staff redundant, two-tier lectureships and teaching-only staff, or hollowed out, generic, team-taught modules.

'“The primary challenge...is one of financial sustainability, compounded by a decade of declining public funding for our teaching and research, not one of widespread failures in governance.' (James Miller, Universities Scotland). 2ndary challenge: focus HE on what HEIs are actually for. (Me). 3/3

The Higher Education crisis is completely hollowing out so many universities. Their very nature is being erased. Yet it's hardly being talked about. www.leicester.news/the-lack-of-...

Almost 2 years in the UK as a lecturer in chemistry. One of the biggest differences - students mindset. At 20-21 they keep talking about employability, careers, salaries and debt. Huuuuge difference compared to Europe were students seem more laid back and seem to explore different things in life

Deficit of £31.2 m is claimed by Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University as need for cuts But there's ample money to pay Shakespeare Martineau for legal services No cash for courses, but plenty for corporate lawyers Educational priorities, Cardiff-style www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun...

I’ve never heard people taking **so much** about “career” (in so many different contexts) before I moved to the UK (I assume it’s similar in the US)

The government response to this petition is infuriating. “Maternity and other types of Parental Pay are intended to provide a measure of financial security to support parents whilst they are away from the workplace; they are not a replacement of earnings” except they literally are??? Please sign:

Immigrant’s life in the UK (18 months) >go to the bank >”you have to build your credit score!!” >”uff okay… how?” >”get out credit card!” >”okay…” >”your applications has been rejected bc you dont have credit score” ????

Is asking grant applicants to supply an “independent” referee they've never worked with fair? IMHO it penalises early-career scientists & smaller labs while rewarding the well-connected.

Opinion: “Perhaps what moved me most in Kyiv was meeting Ukrainian students, who spoke passionately about their dreams – not of escape, but of contribution. They want to become the engineers, doctors, teachers and leaders who will rebuild their nation.” ✍️ Charles Cormack #highered #EduSky

Philip Augar, who lead on the review of post-18 education and funding neatly summing up the failures of governance in #UKHE. Note how he links the problems directly to the lifting of the student number caps and the thoughtless scramble that inspired. #SaveHE

STABLE FUNDING. The experiment of having the country's higher education and research reliant on the volatility of student fees, AND removing any predictability by removing the student number distribution clearly doesn't work.

scientists: we’re underfunded and overworked organizations: here’s a webinar how to improve your sleep for real

The UK's paternity leave is the worst in Europe. It frustrates dads, burdens mums, and impoverishes us all. The fight for better parental leave is not just a demand for common decency, but for common sense. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

UK HE be like: here is the marking scheme for the paper length (2500 +/-10% words). Consider these 5 marking criteria and calculate the weighted average. Note that for the first class the student would need to go above and beyond

MscL channel opens up asymmetrically! Check out our latest story, spearheaded by my brilliant postdoc Olga pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Scientists from @mpi-nat.bsky.social & @qmul.ac.uk cracked the code on ion channel currents with atomic-level accuracy. As Dr @wojciechkopec.bsky.social says, this "opens up entirely new avenues for studying physiology and developing therapeutics."