Term’s in full-swing; the buildings are full of life and the corridors, foyers and cafés are busy. I was delighted to have been asked to do some teaching last week, and taught an undergraduate education studies group – which, amidst all the talk of strategies and budgets, stakeholders and planning, policy and long-term thinking which…

The new academic year begins.  Over the weekend, students fresh and returning have been making their way to Sheffield, full of anticipation for the year ahead.  This – after all – is what the University is all about.  I looked back, as I wrote this blog, at what I wrote a year ago and –…

I switched on the television at ten.  I had intended to look at the exit poll and, assuming it would point to a clear winner, turn in.   My wife stuck to her plan to go to bed, but I stayed up until about 3.30 am – and in an age of Twitter, watching the early…

At noon, on 16 September 1920, an angry Italian anarchist named Mario Buda stopped a horse-drawn wagon near lunchtime crowds on Wall Street in New York, just across the street from the headquarters of the J P Morgan bank. Inside the wagon were a hundred pounds of dynamite and five hundred pounds of heavy cast-iron sash weights.…

Chairing the Teaching Excellence Framework panel means that I have done a good deal of thinking this year about teaching and learning in universities. I’ve had to work through quantitative and qualitative data on teaching in almost all the nation’s universities and the further education colleges offering higher education provision. It has been a fabulous…

The English Civil War was at its height in 1645.  It was a dreadfully destructive conflict – recent estimates are that a greater proportion of the male population was killed or wounded in the Civil War than in the First World War 250 years later. The numbers were much smaller, but the proportion larger.  And…

We all have them.  Some weeks are full of challenges and problems in which nothing goes quite right and the unexpected shocks outnumber the unanticipated surprises. It means that by Friday lunchtime we are looking at the clock and waiting to get through to the relative safety of Friday night and the weekend. I had…

By all accounts, the Prime Minister will trigger the formal notification of the UK’s intention to leave the European Union on Wednesday this week. It will open a tortuous series of negotiations and, barring unforeseen eventualities, means that the UK will leave the EU in the Spring of 2019. There is some legal disagreement about…

There’s a scene in Annie Hall where the Woody Allen character recalls his elementary school classroom. The film transports him back to the classroom as his adult self, surrounded by his classmates as the children he remembers. He wonders what happened to them. In turn, the young pupils stand up and voice what has happened…

Philanthropy is one of the UK’s great traditions. As Shirley Pearce’s report on philanthropy in higher education points out, from medieval through Victorian to modern times, generous donations have facilitated the development of academic institutions. Philanthropy enabled them to become internationally successful and to play their part in economic, social and cultural success.   But if…