Academic Careers

Tips to Chair a Meeting Effectively. 1. What is the meeting for? Is the meeting needed to gather information, to generate new ideas, to explore options in detail, or to make decisions? Or perhaps it is some combination of the above? Is the meeting needed at all? Meetings cost money….>

An ever-present and increasing problem for today’s universities is the use of essay mills by the student body. Essay mills have emerged in recent years as large-scale businesses offering paid-for writing services including essays, dissertations, PhDs and other forms of assessment, all tailored to specific degrees and courses, and often…>

Work-integrated Learning (WIL) is a new conceptual framework to help universities build on their current employability work to create forward-thinking, future-driven strategies for offering practice-orientated learning across the curriculum.  Employability has long been a key part of universities’ mission to produce graduates who can transition smoothly into the workplace. Under…>

As outlined in my previous article Managing the (new) Admissions Cycle there have been great changes in the last year or so to the number of unconditional offers made by universities to applicants, with unintended consequences for the overall pattern of admissions across the academic year, as well as with larger, still…>

Changes are afoot in university admissions. In 2017-2018 the number of unconditional offers made to applicants shot up seventeen-fold, or 40%, from a mere 2,985 students in 2013-2014, to last year’s record of 51,615 (see UCAS’s 2017 End of Cycle Report on Offer-Making). This increase has been the subject of debates in…>

Examination Boards in the UK are the official bodies that set and mark exams for qualifications such as GCSEs, A levels and BTEC vocational qualifications. Jobs with examination boards are well suited towards candidates with teaching or lecturing experience, as well as a degree or postgraduate qualifications. Careers with Exam…>

If you’re an early-career researcher or lecturer the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) may be your first REF round, but it probably won’t be your last. The main way in which the REF will affect early-career academics is in its requirement for outputs (between two and four published outputs for…>

Research leave can be a blessing, but like other aspects of academic life, needs to be managed carefully in order to get the most out of it. Here are a few tips on how to make the best use of your time if you’re fortunate enough to be awarded leave…>