Strikes cloud Acas contract talks
A row erupted this week between lecturers' union Natfhe and employers over the continued use of strike action while talks carry on at Acas to solve the college contracts dispute. Roger Ward, chief...
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Don's Diary
Monday. Breakfast at Hotel Villa Kastania (Horsechestnut Hotel). Most of the streets in Charlottenburg (part of the British quarter of Berlin) are named after the trees which line them. We do not...
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Knowing your NVQs
John Sparkes's understanding of NVQs is incomplete. All bodies responsible for designing NVQs must do so according to national criteria. These criteria demand that they embrace the following: * The...
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Knowing your NVQs
John Randall (THES, April 14) and John Sparkes (THES, April 28) come from opposite poles in the National Vocational Qualifications and competence debate. As both quote engineering in support of their...
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Collective key to standards
As the debate nears its conclusion John Stoddart sets out his framework for quality assurance. Now that discussions have begun in earnest about future arrangements for quality assurance, we should...
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Students set their pace on funding policy
The inaccuracies and distortion of fact in "Follow my Labour" must be corrected. The NUS debate over education funding will be open and controversial. It is however, disappointing that your...
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What is quantum mechanics?
Belying its reputation for arcane irrelevance, quantum mechanics addresses problems of great importance for practical human activity. It explains, for example, the rigidity of chairs and tables...
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A city of lost hopes
Amela Sadagic on the war in her beloved Sarajevo. The day I left Sarajevo in April 1992 I thought I would have the kind of weekend I always had: a short visit to my parents' home 70km away in the...
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Conjurers of conjecture
Peter Holland condemns the mystification of science by the popularisers. Physicists are claiming quantum mechanics is incomprehensible and science can chart a path to God. But quantum physics does...
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Liberal with the ink
Colin Matthew edited one prime minister's papers that were donated to the nation. William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) was four times chancellor of the exchequer and four times prime minister. He was...
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Hot air and global warming
Ragnar Lofstedt asks if grand environmental UN conclaves really achieve anything. Global warming is in the news again. Last month signatories to the United Nations convention on climate change came...
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Creative computing
Margaret Boden believes that computers can teach us a lot about human creativity. Aisling Irwin went to meet her. The story of Henry Ant, composed by a computer program called Tale-Spin, is...
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Hot on Chile, cool on Rio
Huw Richards talks to Victor Bulmer-Thomas, the organiser of this week's ILAS conference on the Latin American economy. Rarely has that hackneyed formulation "First the good news, then the bad" been...
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Discoursing with intent
Sociology, its critics claim, is wedded to jargon and unloved by the society it purports to understand. But Michle Barrett argues that the discipline still has much to say. The link between academic...
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Singing tune of Return to Fender
I attended the Association of University Administrators' Conference in Bristol last month. The prospect of so many university administrators all together would be daunting to the most resilient vice...