(paywalled) the FT coming out in favour of more research funding for science at Uk universities we might want to add more funding for ALL subjects, but actually it would be a net good on many levels for gov to reverse course on the existing real terms funding cuts www.ft.com/content/1419...

Time for Andy Burnham to smile on UK science

Waning support for basic research threatens Britain’s technology ambitions

ft.com

Yes, yes, yes. By its very nature, an LLM is a-contextual; it tears words out of any framework that could lend them meaning. It cannot possibly do historical work.

"Everything is just data so we can computer it" has broken so many brains I swear

And if people want to make it about bad supervision practices and so on, that's cool we can absolutely have that talk, but may I also introduce you to academic workload models while we're chatting.

Thank you to all who attended today's meeting on the 'Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History'. Very valuable proposals in difficult times for history in HE / UK HE more widely. We've also a new guide bit.ly/4z1fAjO listing 100+ UK #history societies & networks supporting historians #Skystorians

Lucy Delap@lucydelap.bsky.social · yesterday

Great discussion at the 'crisis in UK history' meeting hosted by @ihr.bsky.social, @royalhistsoc.org, @histassoc.bsky.social and History UK. Horror stories of closures and redundancies, balanced by new resources. Check out for ex. the new Independent Historians Network independenthistorians.org

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

Between the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)

The sheer scale of the closures and job losses in UK HE are plain today. Departure posts and lifeboats visible across all of HE Linkedin, lots here too. In what is now an annual exercise, I tap the sign, which reads: "This has nothing to do with how 'good' these depts or staff are, or were."

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 · 3d 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...

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...

Several UK universities nearly ran out of cash last year, says report

Almost a quarter of higher education institutions were left with less than 70 days of cash to cover costs

ft.com

I don’t really want to get into this with people who feel this way, but i don’t think this is a good thing! We don’t need to behave this way! It’s not healthy to approach academic discourse as an exercise in harshness!

I’m always a careful editor and formatter, but I am SUPER ESPECIALLY CAREFUL when it’s a friend I’m editing and formatting. Cause I know they’ll yell at me if I get it wrong….

I’ve started framing critique as ‘figuring out how and why it works (or doesn’t)’ - ‘critical’ carries a lot of unfortunate linguistic baggage. Works a bit better and gets them focussed on the right stuff, too…

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 6d ago

I agree with this, I see it in students, who are terrified of being critical of texts, because they "don't want to be mean" which can lead to them trying to give the benefit of the doubt to some truly awful historical authors, ideas and texts

I agree with this, I see it in students, who are terrified of being critical of texts, because they "don't want to be mean" which can lead to them trying to give the benefit of the doubt to some truly awful historical authors, ideas and texts

Catherine Frieman@cjfrieman.bsky.social · 6d ago

Theory: The context collapse of the 21st century means many people read or consume media through a deeply personalised lens - everything is either about or for them specifically, so critical writing is experienced as confrontation

Due to my American/polymath-ish education , I pull from my non-specialist subjects when writing. Most commonly, I like to use music metaphors. I remember once, a lecturer telling me my metaphor ‘made no sense to someone with actual music training.’

This impoverishment of what education is inflicted across #UKHE. It's frustrating to see the bodies that are supposed to safeguard academic standards pass this through out of defeatism. We're the ones safeguarding higher education. You can't say this 'just happens' if you're letting it through.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last wk.

'Strip away the grandiose language and a pattern emerges – some combination of fewer, larger modules, almost always wedges of 30 credits, an all-core or heavily prescribed first year, reduced optionality in later years, curated pathways instead of individual module choice... [cont.] 1/4

a propos of that statement... Books are ABSOLUTELY NOT just a delivery mechanism for information. This hyperfocus on "information" is the root of the whole problem really.

Yn a worlde where the humanityes are being systematicallye defunded by both the righte and the lefte, the internet ys one big seminar about the meaninge of *The Odyssey.* Ther ys a lesson yn thys somewher. And the lesson ys: funde the humanityes.

Stoppe callinge them Data Centers and starte callinge them slop hellmouths

I hate to be this person, but this is PRECISELY how high school streaming works in the US, and has for decades.

Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm all in favour of technical education* but I worry about streams, especially in English education as it is currently constituted - what safeguards are there going to be to ensure that the 'technical stream' doesn't just become the dumping ground of the weak and troublesome students?

Doing that most dangerous of research for a literary scholar: writing about a bunch of books I *really* love...

US readers the UKHE situation (not limited to one uni) is even direr than it first appears--bc of UK PhD design (no coursework), these few fac and the students themselves are responsible for methodology, languages, whatever else students need for their projects. UG to PhD unworkable.

Plashing Vole@plashingvole.bsky.social · 2w ago

My dept is about to be reduced to 3 people covering 3 separate disciplines. The 25 PhD students will be left bereft of adequate supervision numerically and in terms of expertise. The government has decided that they should have no recourse (music to my university’s ears).

Remember my rule: c.90% of what you read about universities in the press is nonsensical drivel, and most of that the literal opposite of the truth. Garbage words out of an excrement tub of lazy falsehoods.

Peter Whitewood@pwhitewood.bsky.social · last wk.

Heffer showing his ignorance about universities again. For many towns and cities, ‘let them fail’ means one of the biggest local employers disappearing.

I worry about taking on PhD students these days. I can recruit, I can (probably) even support them in their first year. Can I guarantee anything further than that? Nope… and I cover such an odd crossection of topics that no one else can take them on…

Plashing Vole@plashingvole.bsky.social · 2w ago

My dept is about to be reduced to 3 people covering 3 separate disciplines. The 25 PhD students will be left bereft of adequate supervision numerically and in terms of expertise. The government has decided that they should have no recourse (music to my university’s ears).

My dept is about to be reduced to 3 people covering 3 separate disciplines. The 25 PhD students will be left bereft of adequate supervision numerically and in terms of expertise. The government has decided that they should have no recourse (music to my university’s ears).

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2w ago

'Read it on a substantial train delay – alongside the promises made to students when the Office for Students (OfS) was created – it is something much worse. It is the formal expiry of the deal that was supposed to make marketisation safe for the people paying for it.' 2/2

Terrifying stuff. Though I worry the last few paragraphs about who will get the blame will be wrong: I can see student, parent, media backlash against ‘universities’ in general and a willingness to blame them instead of the government and OfS who are the real culprits.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2w ago

'On Tuesday the government published its response to the Education Committee’s report on higher education funding and the threat of insolvency. It’s 37 pages...read quickly, amount to a department competently batting away an inconvenient select committee.' 1/2

A strong and competent UK state would sweep in here and grab every PhD student we can find. Alas, no such state exists and we won't bother doing anything, as usual.

Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 3w ago

Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...

Every academic outside of a small inner core of universities should consider themselves permanently at risk of redundancy. The sector will operate a rolling redundancy wave from about this point on. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nuclear...

‘Nuclear’ restructure at London South Bank seen as ‘test bed’

University claims its changes will protect academic jobs and strengthen teaching but striking staff say reforms pose an ‘existential’ threat

timeshighereducation.com

The government has now washed its hands of universities in England. Prospective students and parents should be warned: they are now almost unprotected in the event of a failure, and it's possible doors may close *same day* in case of a collapse. wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

Ministers are throwing students to the wolves

On Tuesday the government published its response to the Education Committee’s report on higher education funding and the threat of insolvency.

wonkhe.com

The government will intervene “only where this is necessary to protect students and taxpayers". They know that HEI staff are taxpayers, right? And letting Universities get substantially worse isn't protecting students. It doesn't have to be an insolvency framework, it just needs to be SOMETHING!

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2w ago

'Ministers have rejected calls to establish a “special regime” for bailing out universities facing insolvency, saying that political intervention should not be the “default response” in such scenarios.' 1/3