My former employer is selling one of its campuses, ending almost all journal subscriptions, and shutting down programs (& laying off staff) left and right, but it has plenty of money to subject its community to surveillance and thought policing.
Nothing is certain except:
- Death
- Taxes
- My University has updated the form since the last time I used it so it is impossible to ever be efficient
Imagine running a cafe, it is losing business. What do you do? Reduce your menu to tea and toast, get rid of your most experienced staff, lower the ingredients quality to toilet water and dust, and pay for lots of managers business consultants to "run" the business.
#UKHE in a nutshell.
Meta will begin keystroke logging US employees at work -- complete with mouse movements and periodic screenshots -- to train better AI agents.
This comes after Boz posted about a future in which AI will "primarily do the work" at meta.
It's a new era for tech labor. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Few things are more heartwarming than a redundancy consultation letter that misspells your name.
Universities really don’t care, do they? How hard is this to get right?
Here's a quote from Gibson's letter to the VC: "My name was misspelt – yet one of many indications of the abysmal lack of care exhibited by senior managers throughout this process, who have had no human respect in their dealings with peoples’ lives and livelihoods." True in 2021, still true in 2026.
Horus - 'most often depicted as a falcon ... or as a man with a falcon head'
Genuinely, journalists from the Guardian & the BBC saying it's too small, they don't have time for this, while these international partnerships are behind so much of the research in the sector, and thse students are all put in incredibly precarious positions. This horror case encapsulates a rot.
Mumble mumble free speech mumble mumble human rights. So much for Oxford’s much vaunted autonomy and academic freedom!
If I remember correctly, they opened a VSS a few months before 'Shaping for Excellence'. @davidharvie.bsky.social may know more details.
Free speech is being demanded of universities. I think there’s a misunderstanding of education at the heart of these concerns, and focus on academic freedom would be more helpful. Blog post:
#highereducation
matthewbarnard.phd/posts/2026-0...
“The feeling among the Mexican community here is that they used us and took advantage of the dreams of capable people, of outstanding students, and simply flaunted their own names,”
QMUL went into a dodgy partnership. And 38 students are paying the price. Please have a read #UKHE
There are currently 6 permanent full time history jobs in the whole UK. 500+ PhDs being produced a year - not all of whom will want to pursue an academic year but likely most, and of course years will stack up onto each other. What a sector.
My previous research centre was among the highest performing in terms of REF at the university. It didn't stop senior management from gutting it. You can play their game perfectly, obey all their rules, and buy into their metrics... and still lose.
Don't ever think they're coming for you because you're not good at your job.
More on the state of British academia.
Such cruelty and brutalisation effected through these processes that are dismantling disciplines and universities in the face of governmental indifference
Book cover of Being a University by Ronald Barnett.
"But spirit-as-flame is only possible amid air. Crowd out the air and the flame dies, and the spirit with it. Increasingly, the air is being sucked out of universities as they become more corporate, more bureaucratic and more managed." (Barnett: Being A University, p.153)
15 minutes; no questions; tells you enough about how staff is valued at universities in the UK.
This is where free speech absolutism on university campuses leads: the widespread dissemination of disinformation 👇 The journals who published Lynn’s discredited database - where the claim that Somalians have an average IQ of 68 originates - typically did so in the name of “freedom of enquiry”
Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.
"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X
The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.
I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).
So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.
Goldsmiths students occupy library in protest against job cuts: group demands university leaders rule out compulsory redundancies and course closures following new cost-saving plans
https://ow.ly/eeW850YMPK7
15 minutes; no questions; government got the blame; my department to have 60% of us sacked. Apparently sacking us will lead to a ‘new, improved’ curriculum. No voluntary scheme, straight to selection and legal minimum redundancy payment.
So sorry. Solidarity!
there's no academic freedom in Texas's public universities
but there's no academic freedom wherever a billionaire or a state governor can exercise a veto over what gets researched or taught and be confident that university administrators will enforce it -- whether the rationale is morals or markets
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