Notebook
Analysis, methods, and experiments on perception science, trustworthy AI, and visualisation craft.
If you have ever wondered how UK research funding works, you are not alone. Many people (including those who apply for it) still picture a benevolent pot of money being poured directly into a lab by a person in a hi-v...
The Office for Students (OfS) has a rule about university accounts. A real one. Not a “best endeavours” one. Not a “when you get round to it” one. An actual condition of being on the register 📜. For English providers,...
There's a glitch in the Google Maps matrix. At least, that's how it feels if you search for "Universities in London". Ulster, the West of Scotland, and sizeable bits of Nottingham and Coventry all seem to be jostling...
🔴 It’s Red University Day. 🔴 I have already posted the “I’m only mildly alarmed” (🟢) and “I’m checking the exits, but calmly” (🟠) lists. Today is the institutions that will probably have to do something properly drama...
Last week I posted a list of the green (and green-ish) universities I have the least concern about financially. It was, depressingly, a short list. The amber list, by contrast, is rather longer. Amber does not mean “a...
The £925 levy on international students is not about "Investing in domestic students" or "vital financial support". That's pure soundbite 💩 It has very little to do with how public finance – or universities – actually...
Universities are busy signing big AI deals to give every student a "copilot" or "study assistant" 🤖. Far fewer strategy papers ask the obvious question: what happens when a distressed 19-year-old starts confiding in i...
Universities keep telling me they want to be "AI-first". Then you look at the workload model, the promotion criteria and the risk register… and AI is nowhere to be seen. 🙃 We are awash with AI strategies, pilots and "...
There is a distinct grim comedy in the reports emerging from Staffordshire University this week. Students on a computing course allegedly found themselves staring at lecture slides with file names like "chat-gpt-1", l...
Every era had its “obvious” degree. In 1350, you studied theology to save your soul. In 1850, you studied classics to run the Empire. In 1995, you studied business to get a nice office and a pot plant. 🌿 Look at the...
The death of higher education has been greatly exaggerated, again. Ian Richardson’s recent piece in Times Higher Education argues that higher education has “dismally failed” to engage with AI and risks being displaced...
UK research funding 🇬🇧 is being quietly dismantled and rebuilt while most universities 🏛️ look the other way. If your institution is relaxed about the current flurry of consultations and the delay in the periodic Rese...
Set a high-stakes, online exam on “Natural Language Processing & ChatGPT” for 600 students and you have not designed an assessment; you have announced a public challenge to the very people best equipped to out-think i...
UK universities are quietly writing off millions in unpaid international tuition – and in some cases it's wiping out over 10% of their fee income in a single year. Here is the uncomfortable version. International fees...
Inflation Link vs. Centralised Control: Unpacking the HE White Paper 📄 Yesterday's government White Paper offered a glimmer of hope to universities' strained finances with talk of inflation-linked fees. But dig deeper...
More "meh" than menace? The Pew people just published their global survey on AI hopes and fears. 🌍😐 It doesn't deliver the doom or the drum-roll many expected. Instead, the most common answer in many countries is glor...
Do you recognise this face? The suspect is 58 years old (on average), male (in two thirds of sightings), and of North European ethnicity (98%). Often goes by the name of Andy, Peter, Paul or Steve. Claims to have been...
University College London isn’t a budget carrier, but it just learned the cost of overbooking. Extra visas have opened the gate; the question is why it got this far. Over the weekend we had headlines about students be...
Computer says yes: why I’d prefer to be fired by AI I was made redundant by a panel so mysterious it made the REF panel look like Eurovision. No minutes. No rationale. When I asked for the reasoning, the collective re...
Scrap the university fee cap tomorrow and £9,250 doesn’t gently adjust to inflation - it straps on a jetpack. To be clear up front: complete price deregulation is not coming to the UK. No minister wants to spend the n...
UPDATED: UK universities are *still* on a knife-edge. Thanks for all your comments. This topic has touched a nerve - if any more University PR people want to reach out I'm happy to update with the latest info. Recent...
Here’s my opinionated take on the top ten UK universities most likely to be merged or subsumed in the next 2–3 years. Kent–Greenwich shows consolidation isn’t hypothetical any more; the question is who’s next. 10) Bir...
AI is in a terrible hype cycle. The bubble is inflating fast with no revenue in sight. So why am I still so excited? 🤔 🤷 I shouldn’t be. A rational person would view from afar while the circus burns through its...
Amidst artificial intelligence hype, how many hypers have answered the question, 'what exactly is "intelligence"?' Pop-philosopher and Silicon Valley icon, Nick Bostrom, certainly hasn't, in his decade-old book I revi...
❓ Are graduate salaries the wrong way to measure universities? 🎓 Everyone’s talking about the LEO data on graduate outcomes. Some say it’s the holy grail of accountability, others suspect it’s more of a half-finished...
*Britain’s “crazy doctors” problem* The challenges facing international students are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm hearing from young NHS doctors who want to stay in the UK but feel it would be "crazy" to do so. Th...
If 40% of providers are in deficit, why are vice-chancellor packages still drifting north of £341k? Because the VC pay ratchet keeps clicking: remuneration committees that vote themselves rich, circular benchmarking,...
They’re the Jenga piece you daren’t touch, the quiet support holding up a rickety tower. They’re the espresso shot in a gallon of lukewarm latte. 🤑 International Students 🤑 I’ve written a short piece that cuts through...
Universities in the UK are in financial trouble. Instead of individual cost-cutting that shrinks institutions, the sector could save billions through collective action and smarter revenue diversification.
I was made redundant 4 months ago today. Fast-forward four months: zero salary, zero job, and—rather paradoxically—a very busy diary. So what's it actually like, drifting through middle-age employment limbo with a gym membership you no longer use and a freezer full...
Calling a university's strategy its 'business model' is like calling the Royal Opera House a karaoke bar. Universities need a busyness model focused on public value, not just profit margins.
Westminster rushes to save 1,300 car jobs at Lotus but shrugs at 10,000 university redundancies. Apparently some independent organisations are more independent than others.
Artificial intelligence has catapulted from the plaything of graduate students to the digital weather system that now soaks every corner of the economy. The upsides are dazzling; the downsides, well, they're the reason you're reading this article instead of a holiday brochure....
Universities compete fiercely while claiming to collaborate generously. It's time to examine why the sector's most obvious solution—working together—remains frustratingly elusive.
When 'rightsizing' becomes the euphemism du jour for mass redundancies, you know corporate-speak has officially jumped the shark. Let's decode the jargon that's chloroforming common sense.
UK universities could save £1.5 billion through collaboration, but pyramid politics and cultural feudalism keep them competing over stationery while students foot the bill.
Universities are built like medieval cathedrals when they should be assembled like flatpack furniture. Modular, efficient, and possible to rebuild when you inevitably lose the instructions.
Fifteen years after ministers promised that private partnerships would revolutionise British higher education, we ask: who actually made any money? Spoiler alert: nobody ends up bathing in gold coins, but at least the catering's cheaper.
A UK university cannot simply press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and vanish. Here's what actually happens when institutions reach the end of the financial road.
Universities belong to exactly the same person who owns Stonehenge and the Shipping Forecast: nobody in particular and everyone in theory. They're magnificent, slightly aloof, and impossible to sell on eBay.
Universities belong to exactly the same person who owns Stonehenge and the Shipping Forecast: nobody in particular and everyone in theory. They're magnificent, slightly aloof, and impossible to sell on eBay.
British universities have morphed into Versailles-sized palaces of PowerPoint where the managerial pyramid grows faster than academic staff. Time to flatten the hierarchy and trust the people who can actually spell phenomenology.
Universities in the UK are in financial trouble. Instead of individual cost-cutting that shrinks institutions, the sector could save billions through collective action and smarter revenue diversification.
Calling a university's strategy its 'business model' is like calling the Royal Opera House a karaoke bar. Universities need a busyness model focused on public value, not just profit margins.
Westminster rushes to save 1,300 car jobs at Lotus but shrugs at 10,000 university redundancies. Apparently some independent organisations are more independent than others.
67 UK universities have redundancy schemes running, but they're calling it 'rightsizing.' It's time to sack the euphemism and interrogate the plan.
The term 'AI slop' has become a lazy catch-all for any machine-assisted work. Here's a detailed taxonomy for more precise AI quality assessment—because clear language is the first step toward cleaner machine-made work.
After spending most of my life inside universities, I find myself on the outside looking in—and I don't plan to go back any time soon. Here's why the current state of UK higher education is pushing talent away.