Academics UK

Kingston Uni's Psychology Dept. in the poop...

2008-07-25T16:42:44Z

...and removed from the National Student Survey.

'The removal of Kingston's psychology department follows a recording which caught staff instructing students to falsify their approval ratings. Students were told by staff if they gave negative responses "nobody is going to want to employ you".'

File under "Oops".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7526061.stm

Not quite a league table of graduate liars...

2008-07-21T16:48:32Z

...but nevertheless:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7517918.stm

I like this bit of the report:

"The most common types of discrepancies were dates of employment, academic and professional qualifications and undisclosed directorships. The survey also suggested that women were 25% more likely to lie than men."

Tut. If you'd mentioned that you were already the director of six companies, Miss ________, we'd have offered you the job on the spot...

And now the GOOD news...

2008-07-10T11:03:16Z

"The Higher Education - Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey, published today, reveals that higher education's contribution to the economy continued to grow in 2006-07, reaching record levels. UK higher education institutions (HEIs) received £2.64 billion from business and community interaction in 2006-07. This is a 17 per cent rise from the last survey (for 2005-06)."

More here: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2008/hebci.asp

OT: Attackademia

2008-07-09T21:55:32Z

Hi all - inspired by my astonishment at some recent reads, I've created a livejournal community for making a scrapbook of hilarious, and/or witty, ascerbic, memorable, or otherwise interesting in-publication academic snipe and snark. This is not a gossip or sparring site; just for sharing particularly vivid quotations from academic books and journals.

attackademia - please join and contribute!

My apologies if you've seen this multiple times today - I'm crossposting a few places but this will be the only hey-over-here! that you see from the community. Thanks!

Friday the 11th is D-Day at Plymouth...

2008-07-09T15:57:48Z

Much sympathy to Mike Sheaff at the University of Plymouth, where courses, jobs, and future student numbers are currently hanging in the balance. Mike is the staff spokesman there, but students are also understandably nervous about what £10m in cuts over two years is going to mean for their education.

And speaking of Education, that particular Plymouth faculty's OFSTED ranking in June (the highest possible - http://www.upsu.com/news/index.php?page=article&news_id=9992) didn't even make it into BBC Devon's coverage of the proposed cuts:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7494759.stm

Plymouth is neither a special, nor an isolated case in UK academia*, but its geographical location, and particular track record in marine-based studies have marked it out as a centre of excellence.

Good luck for Friday...

*The general picture: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7496247.stm

Well DUH. Like...y'know? Can't someone ELSE do it? Wot does that mean?

2008-07-08T02:27:59Z

'Poor reading and writing skills among graduates are a concern for half of the UK's top employers, a survey suggests.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters found 56% of the 200 firms surveyed had concerns about a lack of "hard skills" like writing, literacy and leadership.

The survey found employers were also less likely to trust degree grades as "gold standards" for recruitment.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7494172.stm

Music Experience and Behaviour in Young People.

2008-07-07T13:16:52Z

Those BMR/University of Hertfordshire survey findings in summary...

1. Young people (14-24) like listening to music.
2. They're a bunch of bloody pirates.
3. Feargal Sharkey used to be in the Undertones and now omigod, WTF, he's The Man®. *Facepalms*.

Links:

http://www.hertfordshire.ac.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/MySpace-Generation.cfm

http://www.bmr.org/page/press-release-29

academics_uk @ 2008-07-06T17:11:00

2008-07-06T16:12:27Z

I'm filling in an application form which asks for a list of publications and asks the applicant to sort this into Books/ Book Chapters, Refereed Conference Publications, Full Refereed Papers, Conference Abstracts and 'Other'. I'm fine with most of this, even the other, but the conference abstracts confuses me - do I list all the papers I've given at conferences, or is there a publication type I've just not encountered?

I'm wondering if its a discipline thing - I'm a media studies/ history/ sociology type but the job is at a science-based institution.

Abbott and Costello do Maths

2008-07-04T17:05:05Z

7 x 13 = 28!

YouTube - Abbott and Costello Math

Here is another of theirs: "Give Me My Money"

These amuse me - why are there no maths jokes anymore? ^_^

x posted a bit...

Update on Teaching Fellow post

2008-07-02T18:02:12Z

I posted a little while ago about the interview process for a teaching fellow position at my university.

I didn't get the job, which wasn't really surprising considering my lack of experience, but it sounds as though I'll be able to gain a little experience over the next year or so anyway - the department seems very keen to encourage me into teaching and research. It's disappointing, but means I can give all my attention to my own studies next year, so there are upsides to the decision. And it was good experience!

Thanks to everyone who offered advice.

Can't wait for 'em to get to f*cking uni...

2008-06-30T20:54:59Z

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article4237491.ece

(Link via sott_rss.)

...or maybe catering college? (Gordon Ramsay springs to mind, unaccountably.)

Advice on presentation for teaching fellow job?

2008-06-25T17:17:35Z

I'm a new member of this community and I hope you can help me with some advice. I've just finished my undergraduate degree and am starting a masters in September, and I'm interviewing for a part-time teaching fellow post in my department next week.

I have to do a ten minute presentation on what I see as my potential for contributing to teaching in the department. I'm not too worried about the interview, but the presentation is scaring me a bit - I'm not great at selling myself, and I don't know how to put across my enthusiasm for the subject and the department without sounding immodest or overselling myself. (I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't at my own department - the presentation is to members of staff, and I'll know most, if not all, of them. I'd much prefer to present to strangers.)

Does anyone have any advice to help me to sell myself sympathetically?

External examiners under pressure to curtail criticism?

2008-06-24T18:38:47Z

"At issue was whether standards should be judged against other similar types of university - such as new universities trying to recruit a wider range of students? Or should there be an absolute level of standards, taking a benchmark from older universities with a more academic student intake?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7470125.stm

Not a story about Tanya Byron.

2008-06-20T11:33:31Z

Here's a general rule of thumb, though, for media-friendly academics in the modern age:

The words "celebrity psychiatrist/psychologist" will rarely, if ever, be used to describe you in a good context...

'Dr Persaud admitted plagiarising four research papers for his 2003 book From The Edge of The Couch.

He also admitted copying the work of two foreign academics for five articles he wrote for publications including the British Medical Journal and The Independent.

He claimed he was in a confused mental state at the time because of the pressure of juggling his NHS and media work.

But Dr Anthony Morgan, chair of the GMC Fitness to Practise panel, had said he must have known his actions "would be considered dishonest by ordinary people".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7465539.stm

I was pretty sure he'd been outed as a former head of standards at the University of London...

2008-06-17T19:40:13Z

...but I could be wrong:

"Degrees are being awarded to overseas students who speak almost no English, claims a whistleblowing academic.

The academic, at a world-famous UK university, says postgraduate degrees are awarded to students lacking in the most basic language skills."

More here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7358528.stm

Conference season.

2008-06-13T13:22:50Z

You nearly got my piece from 2001 on "Ciggy breaks and the Dance of the Vibrating Cellphones", but this is older and funnier (slightly):

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/conference-etiquette.html

research help request

2008-06-06T02:26:21Z

Hi,

I am in desperate to get participants for my thesis. The study can be done completely online, it is completely anonymous, I have ethical approval from my university ethics board. Full and complete information can be found on the web page below. Please check it out if you feel like being entertained for 30-40 minutes.
Important! Must be 18. I don't have ethics approval to get informed consent from minors.

http://homepage.usask.ca/~elb823

thank you.

Erin

Well, you know what they say about performance indicators...er, I mean statistics.

2008-06-05T16:28:06Z

The HESA report on widening student participation in higher ed is all over the news at the moment (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7435641.stm and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article4069357.ece for example), but for curiosity value alone most bods in the biz are keeping their powder dry for the report on employment due out next month.

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2008/wp.htm

Coverage of the story may vary...

2008-06-03T23:42:40Z

Compare and contrast http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7434463.stm with http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023992/Top-university-make-applicants-sit-entrance-exam-A-level-dumbing-down.html

You could have someone's eye out with that!

2008-05-28T15:32:47Z

Graduation ceremonies are SRS, okay?

"Anglia Ruskin University, with campuses at Cambridge and Chelmsford in Essex, said a corner of a mortar board could hit someone as it falls."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7423086.stm

Well, at least it's not p_l_t_c_l c_rr_ctn_ss g_n_ m_d, or anything...

interview for a CS lectureship at an Irish university

2008-05-28T13:56:51Z

I've been invited to an interview for a lectureship position in computer science at an Irish university. They told me that I should prepare a 15 min presentation about my current research and that the whole interview is not expected to last more than 45 min. Apart from that I do not really know what to expect. Does anybody here have experience with such interviews?

I assume that the Irish system is probably pretty similar to the UK system? My experience is limited to central and northern Europe, so I would appreciate any comments and insights you might give me. Thanks in advance.

Cross-posted to faculty_r_us.

translation payment rate question

2008-05-26T08:53:32Z

I have done a good deal of translation (usually of neo-Latin) but have always been paid a fixed sum agreed at the beginning. There is a possibility of a new job, paid per 1000 words of text to be translated, and I've been asked to name the going rate. Anyone have any ideas?

academics_uk @ 2008-05-22T12:00:00

2008-05-22T09:19:54Z

Dear native speakers of English, could anyone please help? What words 'loaned' from psychological sciences are part of your everyday speech? I presume the list should include 'stress', 'unconscious', 'inferiority complex', 'unstable'. Is it so? Could you give several more examples? Are these words 'psycho-bubble' or does 'psycho-babble' raher mean speech of mental health specialists peppered with professional slang?

The HEFC are sticking to their guns, but...

2008-05-13T17:56:35Z

"Students from a range of universities are claiming they are being pressed to make falsely enthusiastic responses to an official satisfaction survey."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7399059.stm

Edit (16/05/2008): The follow-up...

'The Universities Secretary John Denham told the House of Commons that he "utterly condemned" this attempt to distort the survey.

But hundreds of e-mails sent to the BBC News website have challenged the claim that this was an isolated incident - with students claiming that many universities are trying to manipulate the survey.

These include repeated claims that students have been told that a low ranking in the survey will damage the value of their degrees - using what one student described as "scare tactics".

There are also claims that universities are seeing the survey in terms of public image, rather than public value.

Academics contacting the website have highlighted how some universities advertise their "triumph" when they have a high rating in the survey - using the result to recruit new students.'

Revised HEFC survey guidelines will be issued.

More here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7404864.stm

Added to LiveJournal: hefce_news.

Graduates STILL paying, after apparently paying off their loans?

2008-05-03T16:46:01Z

This might be a tad alarming for some of you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7382072.stm