In Praise of Technicians
I was a very ham-fisted PhD student. I repeatedly broke a delicate and crucial piece of apparatus during the early months of my research, to the extent that I almost quit the whole endeavour and...
View ArticleDo You Cope with Office Politics or Leverage them?
In academia, appraisals (call them what you will) get different degrees of serious attention. Equally, people pay more or less heed to them, depending on personal circumstances and whether anything...
View ArticleDo you know Excellence when you see it?
Politicians toss around phrases like ‘levelling up’ and ‘build back better’, not to mention ‘freedom of speech’, with gay abandon. Such words sound so positive and authoritative, what could be the...
View ArticleThe Imperative of Skills
Whereas academic scientists too often only think in terms of producing the next generation of academic scientists like them, the reality is many would-be PIs would be lost without the technicians who...
View ArticleThe Problems of Measurement
How should we measure what is a good outcome from a university education? As David Willetts puts it in his latest report published through the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) ‘The Treasury...
View ArticleSkills, FE and Levelling Up
As we await various key Government papers – specifically the long-awaited response to the Augar Report and the Levelling Up White paper – the news is full of labour shortages. Whereas delivering some...
View ArticleA University Education and a Lifetime of Debt
Finally, the response to the Augar Review, for which we have been waiting for the rather splendid number of 1001 days, has been released. I will not accuse the Government of choosing a good day to bury...
View ArticleJoining the Dots Around Skills
You don’t have to read beyond the first few lines of the summary of last week’s House of Lords’ Science and Technology Select Committee Report to recognize they are sceptical about the Government’s...
View ArticleInvesting in People
We have all got used to the wonders of Zoom (or Teams if you prefer) over the last couple of years. It may have made academic life as we were used to it viable during the pandemic, but it has its...
View ArticleTransferable Skills and Career Paths
I am honoured to have been invited to give the Gareth Roberts Lecture in Durham next month (in the Physics Department), following a long line of distinguished speakers. To be honest, I did not know...
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