Admission impossible
Californians are anxious these days. Calamities of Biblical proportions bedevil the state. The worst flooding in memory occurred this year, the worst fires are but yesterday and will return tomorrow...
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Ethnic experience at Oxbridge
The article by Pat Younge (April 7) on the experiences of black and other minority ethnic students demonstrates the need for a shift of attention from access to pedagogy in debates about equality of...
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Seeing the light not blight
In the week after the leaders of British universities met to debate their roles in "Cities of Learning", it is salutary to consider the group of urban universities in the United States that are...
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False dichotomy for Asia
Perhaps the emergence of democracy in East Asia is not so different from the western experience during the 18th and early 19th centuries. In both cases, "social changes induced by rapid economic...
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The busy body
Gail Vines meets Emily Martin, one of America's most original anthropologists. Why, all of a sudden, is "the body" such a hot topic in academic circles? Emily Martin, professor of anthropology at...
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Cunning humans, selfless machines
Using neural networks to mimic the way the brain works brings us no closer to understanding consciousness, argues David Salt. Neural network technology seems to cause rational researchers to start...
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Going the whole hog
Kam Patel talks to Richard Dawkins, the zoologist who believes that one day pigs could be made to fly. Richard Dawkins laughs a little as he recalls a recent conversation he had with a colleague. The...
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Don's Diary
FRIDAY. Fly to Warsaw with colleague. Met at airport by Polorbis travel courier with rail tickets. Ignore beggars at Central Station (it is getting more like London every day), and board Pieniny...
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Ethnic experience at Oxbridge
Pat Younge highlighted the racial problems encountered by Shrupti Shah while attending Oxford University. Ms Shah makes a number of very vague and minor complaints: nothing specific, she "whinges"...
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How NVQs ignore the future
It is all very well for a director of standards of the Law Society (John Randall, THES April 14) to recommend NVQs, when to be a good lawyer it is only essential to conform with current practices....
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German at Goldsmiths College
We note that a post is advertised in the German department of Goldsmiths College, London. Those thinking of applying, and those asked to provide references for candidates, might recall that our...
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Lifelong learning at heart of debate
It is indeed rare to hear the voices of part-time students, and pleasing to see an editorial in The THES (April 21) paying explicit attention to them, now that they constitute more than 40 per cent...
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When everyone's a winner
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking...
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Animal Welfare
Each morning, dozens of scientists check under their cars for bombs which they fear may have been planted by animal rights extremists. Meanwhile, many moderate animal welfare groups are stone-walled...
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Give up inspection
The powers that be have a month to sort out a system of quality assurance for higher education. There is a widespread view that it cannot be done: that too many incompatible demands are being made....