Australia produces thousands of PhD graduates every year but many will find it hard to secure a university career. So we should do more to help them consider a career outside of academia.
Following the failed coup in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the sacking of nearly 1,600 deans, 21,000 teachers and 15,000 education bureaucrats.
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Financial incentives alone won’t increase research collaboration between universities and business. Academics say they need time, support and an environment encouraging of engagement.
Academics may feel especially ashamed if they’re harassed by those over whom they have authority.
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Universities stand to benefit enormously if excellent teachers are celebrated and given the chance to share their skills, and if they have the power to really change their institutions.
We should care about who is on a university council.
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Academics from several South African universities say that in the current world economy decisions about any country’s finance minister cannot be made “lightly or capriciously”.
Students in California protest in solidarity with those in Missouri in a wave of #StudentBlackOut protests across the US.
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Subtly racist behaviour impacts heavily on the career trajectories of black and minority ethnic academics.
Too many academic careers are shaped around writing journal articles nobody reads and planning twice-weekly lectures to a diminishing class of students.
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Prime Minister Turnbull has signalled a desire to move away from a ‘publish or perish’ academic culture toward one that prioritises public impact and engagement. It’s a challenge scholars should embrace.
Mourners outside the Bataclan in Paris after the 13 November attacks.
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We must improve religious literacy among politicians. They should look to universities for more insight.
The iPhone is a good example of an entire industry built on the back of publicly funded research outcomes. The ‘iPhone fish’ is designed to teach people healthy eating through portion size control.
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Publicly-funded research should contribute to society in some way. But we need to think carefully about how we create a system that allows us to measure the impact of research.
Things can’t just carry on as ‘normal’ now that university students in South Africa have demanded massive systemic change.
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The students’ movement has stretched South Africans in personal, professional, powerful and provocative ways. Have academics been stretched enough to reflect deeply on the status quo at universities?
Africa’s future academics must be found, developed, nurtured and retained.
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Shouting past each other via different kinds of media isn’t going to help researchers – from éminences grises to new postdocs – effectively work together on issues in the field of science.
Diaspora academics get used to working in resource rich environments with everything they need. How can Africa compete?
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There is more to drawing diaspora academics back to their home countries in Africa than striking up individual relationships. Infrastructure must be fixed and institutional management must improve.