EXCLUSIVE: A group of students in Gaza have appealed to the University of Glasgow not to 'deprive us of our dreams' after securing unconditional offers to study in Scotland but being left without a way to take up their places

Gazan students plead with Glasgow University after securing offers

thenational.scot

Good editorial from the FT saying our new PM must take a strategic approach to universities www.ft.com/content/1419...

In 50 days time our members will be taking 5 weeks of strike action. We call for the redundancy process to be stopped! Executives want 200 jobs to go (187FTE). Due to resignations and retirements, and non-staff savings, they are 35FTE from their staffing target. Stop this cruel, flawed process.

*Government: we need a sense of place and stronger regional policy to bring us together! *Also government: it's okay to shut this local uni campus in an area of high deprivation! *Thick-as-mince country. No joined-up thinking anywhere. 🇬🇧 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

University of Essex's Southend campus shuts and staff say goodbye

The university says the closure is due to financial pressures, leading to 400 staff redundancies.

bbc.co.uk

The truth is that the UK govt missed its last chances to underpin universities and support regional societies and economies in the post-Covid recovery period and then the 2025 White Paper. Those opportunities won't come again. www.ft.com/content/e14d...

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic students’ fees, limits on international students and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com

So a whole lot of my talented Humanities colleagues are now unemployed as of today. A lot of understandable concern over Exeter. But for over two decades my Hums colleagues were in the top quartile for their research contribution to society. History top 10. Now gone with only a national whisper.

Definitely the case here. In two weeks we find which 9 of 12 in my group will be gone. The other 3 will then have a month to prepare and find hourly-paid replacements for all the classes across two degrees. And supervise 25 PhDs. Plus admin and pastoral care and research. Management doesn’t care.

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4d ago

If you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...

August as an academic

I really need everyone to remember that the fossil fuel industry knew-knows exactly the climate hell we now inhabit, and are determined to make it FAR worse. That's because they have decided our lives are worth far less than their profits. We are not angry -or organised- enough.

It’s shaping up to be an excellent day of leave- first, got a chance to dip in to this excellent new edition, and made the time to write thanks to the scholars whose books I’ve enjoyed in the last year. Later, gay Scottish mollusc farmers at the cinema, dosas, and Paul Black at the Citz. Bliss!

Slightly relieved to realise that I am not the only person for whom the new Scotrail app is failing and locking out. So we'll get fined if we don't have an advance ticket, but we now have no way of buying one? Is this some edgy new income generation strategy?

Bridget Phillipson, reflecting on her years spent standing idly by while UK higher education crumbled into the abyss and tens of thousands of university workers implored her to do something, literally anything, to save their jobs: BUT WHAT ABOUT ME THO www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotion

Exclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalities

theguardian.com

The Labour Party in power has never learned their unpopularity is in large measure due to their support for a genocide. Why don’t they get it?? It’s astonishingly not on their radar. Are they hoping we don’t notice????

The Canary@thecanaryuk.bsky.social · last wk.

Andy Burnham's cabinet of horrors doesn't represent radical change or get Skwawkbox's seal of approval and this is why... By @skwawkbox.org

Now do the cost of continued reliance on gas... www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

Net zero ‘will cost households £1,400 a year by 2030’

Cost of decarbonising the energy network and upgrading the grid is ‘unsustainable’, according to the Prosperity Institute think tank

thetimes.com

Andy Burnham to make it harder for people to claim benefits, vows to ‘get serious’ about cutting welfare bill. Silence on corporate welfare. 37.8% of Universal Credit claimants are in work. Due to hikes in retirement age, many seniors can't work, claim benefits. Women will be hardest hit.

Burnham to make some benefits conditional and ‘get serious’ about cutting welfare

New prime minister has also warned that ‘the NHS will collapse’ unless he fixes social care

independent.co.uk

Reminder that the deadline for Birkbeck's Access to Postgraduate Study Scholarships is 31 July. A great scheme for studying on a master's degree programme at an ace institution. Wide range of eligibility criteria (see next post). Do encourage eligible applicants (or apply yourself). 1/2

The UK was one of the first countries to sign the UN Refugee Convention. They made a promise that people fleeing war and persecution would be protected. To mark this anniversary, we asked Scots about their views on refugees. Here's what we found: https://ow.ly/EvMl50Zttq4

He could punch up and put a wealth tax in place...but as predictably as night follwing day, Burnham announces his plan to kick the poorest. Shame on these people & what they have turned the once caring Labour Party into...

Read this story. Read the comments from Indigenous leaders about a man, a Conservative, Carney has chosen as a key advisor. It says so much about Mark Carney. Always pay more attention to Carney's actions than his words, especially when it comes to First Nations, Metis and Inuit people. #CdnPoli

T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦@tryangregory.bsky.social · 2w ago

www.aptnnews.ca/featured/car...

92,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Spain and France while entire First Nations communities are burning to the ground in Canada. Fossil fuel companies and the politicians who protect them are killing us all

Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · 2w ago

At least 10,000 people have been evacuated following wildfires in the central region of Madrid. Authorities said on Friday that two major blazes were “out of control”. Spain has been struggling to contain deadly fires amid soaring summer temperatures in Europe.

Hivemind! Can anyone help me out? If you like the content on this stream and you agree with me about Higher Ed, is anyone going to be at the UK National Archives now or soon who could photograph a single file for me? I will be eternally grateful/ can pay back in coffee, beer etc.! ☕🍺

🚨EXCLUSIVE: Newly appointed Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has taken tens of thousands of pounds from donors with links to arms firms and controversial US tech firm Palantir, The National can reveal👇 www.thenational.scot/news/2640176...

Wes Streeting took thousands from donors with links to arms firms and Palantir

WES Streeting took tens of thousands of pounds from donors with links to arms firms and controversial US tech firm Palantir, The National can reveal…

thenational.scot

The UK government has imposed a funding model on universities that cannot sustain them.

The Times and Sunday Times@thetimes.com · 2w ago

Failing universities ‘will not be bailed out and may close’

Solidarity with Sonam Wangchuk and the youth of India. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaigning for climate justice and Indigenous rights in Ladakh... www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘I’m sorry but I’m unable to speak’: hero of India’s Cockroach party weakens on 19th day of hunger strike

The climate activist and engineer Sonam Wangchuk, who has become the figurehead of anti-government protests in Delhi, is resisting calls to end his fast until the education minister resigns

theguardian.com

And no, Labour ‘loyalists’, I’m not going to stop talking about how your immigration policy is awful, xenophobic and stupid, just to give Burnham a chance to settle in. He lost the benefit of doubt by reappointing Mahmood.

BREAKING: New Prime Minister Andy Burnham effectively ruled out granting Scotland a referendum on independence in his first phone call with First Minister John Swinney Burnham said he is not focused on 'constitutional changes'

Let me put it this way: It certainly is a *choice* to keep as Home Secretary a woman who literally told an immigrant member of the public to “f*ck right off” through a microphone from a stage. To choose keeping that the language of the office that decides who is allowed to stay

The Guardian gets with the programme www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Guardian view on humanities cuts in universities: academic departments are more than cost centres | Editorial

Editorial: Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

theguardian.com