international students. They would be cherished, celebrated. Policy would recognise the economic, political and cultural contribution and maximise the benefits, creating a political environment where the UK becomes the number one choice for the students this country desperately needs.
£37.4 billion net economic contribution. The enlivening of communities and classrooms. Global soft power value, global literacy. Cross subsidy funding of research. Cross subsidy of niche courses. Cultural richness and perspective.
In a rational world, nations would genuinely welcome 1/
Micromanagement isn’t about standards. It’s about anxiety.
because it never gets used.
If you hired well, your job is to get out of the way. Trust isn’t naive, it’s strategic, it signals belief, it cultivates innovation.
The best teams I’ve worked with didn’t need managing. They needed direction, resource, and the freedom to deliver. 2/
Nothing kills excellence like micromanagement. Nothing.
I’ve seen it across FE and HE. Talented people, driven people, then a leader shows up who can’t let go.
Suddenly the energy shifts. Questions replace initiative, permission replaces judgement and people stop bringing their best thinking 1/
political rhetoric, a move to collaborative change, supportive partnership, an authentic care for students, to truly meet that criteria.
and celebrated rather than seen as an inconvenient line on national accounts.
A nation can be judged on many criteria; one of the most essential is how it treats universities and the students - both home and international - who benefit from it most. We need a move beyond 2/
I’ve been in HE for 19 years and this is the most difficult context I’ve seen in that time.
But I love what universities can be. I still have hope that one day higher education will be seen as a true social good once more, that the impact of universities will become rightly appreciated 1/
and what you learned from failure, talk about your journey.
Use AI to gain information about the employer and the role, use it to think through the job description and how your skills match, use it to assess ‘fit’ but write it yourself.
Good organisations recruit authentic people.
personality, a perspective, an expertise honed through the realities of work rather than the artifice of LLMs.
Talk about real impact, real students, real leadership. (I’ve always used the rule of three before AI saturated prose with it so don’t even). Talk about the ‘how’ of success 2/
Want your job application to stand out? Don’t use AI.
For me, real writing is a differentiator for recruitment. When a panel are assessing applications, they want to hear a voice, they want to get an idea of what you would bring, real experiences rather than the generic. They want to feel a 1/
universities that challenge class and elitism and celebrate regional, international and working class accents. That more and more senior leaders are being appointed without code-switching gives me hope. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...
Settings that didn’t require code-switching or adoption of regional pronunciation, settings where theory was expounded in the most resonant authentic accents.
While accent bias in the sector is very real, we must remember that there are universities with less obsession with class and elitism, 4/
I’ve only ever worked in teaching intensive universities (and only ever wanted to work in teaching intensive universities). My experience is one of academia in vocational settings, practice-based settings, rich with regional and international accents, proud working class cadences. 3/
seemingly well-meaning senior academics at conferences gave me advice that I should tone down my working class accent if I wanted to progress. I never did. My accent has remained an indelible marker of my background.
But that was conferences. And they can be a certain type of class-based hell. 2/
‘For many scholars, especially those from ethnic or white working-class backgrounds, linguistic assimilation demands a Faustian bargain of accent switching, adopting RP as the currency of credibility’.
Superb article in the comments on accent bias in HE. Early in my career, 1/
Educational access is economic. Attainment is economic. Graduate outcomes are economic.
If social mobility is the goal, then support must be weighted towards those with the least.
Not rhetoric. Not positioning. Real investment in the students who stand to gain the most.
Really proud to have written this with @profdamienpage.bsky.social championing the value of teaching staff who are disproportionately hit by cuts, but are what drives the fundamental activity of HE - educating students.#HigherEducation #TeachingAcademics www.timeshighereducation.com/even-hard-ti...
Use AI to automate the mundane, of course. Let it do the boring work, the routine, by all means. Let it augment creativity and enhance the social. But preserve the human at all costs.
Second, universities perform the creation of new knowledge rather than producing summaries of what already exists. Like learning, research is intrinsically human, endlessly creative, curious, perpetually inventive.
But universities are resilient for two primary reasons.
Firstly, universities are deeply human. Education is deeply human. Learning is deeply human. Teaching and student support is an atmosphere as much as a process. It is sensory, it is felt, it is social, emotional. 2/
AI will kill universities according to those making a fortune from AI. Everything will be free so what’s the point of higher education. Intelligence will be like a utility. Institutions of knowledge will become obsolete as AI democratises knowledge.
1/
That’s the Easter break sorted
It asks people - including the leader - to tolerate uncertainty and push against the easy consensus.
That’s the real test.
The decision that avoids conflict.
But the right thing in leadership is rarely the comfortable option. It’s not always popular. It’s not always supported. And it’s almost never celebrated in the moment.
More often, it challenges the status quo. It creates discomfort. 2/
The simplest leadership advice is: do the right thing. Simple. But problematic.
Because not everyone is a good judge of what the right thing actually is.
Too often, the right thing becomes whatever carries the least personal risk. The decision that protects reputation, position or relationships.
But more than anything, people get time to think. Universities run on ideas. Yet our diaries often leave very little room for thinking.
Sometimes the most productive thing an organisation can do is remove something, especially meetings, and give people the space to do the work that really matters.
Six months ago we introduced meeting-free Fridays.
Fridays have become the day people catch up, read, write, plan. New ideas get bounced around. Publications and projects get shared. New resources developed, new technology experimented with.
1/
per night. Free meals, cheapest coffee in town. The Big Deal providing over £200 of free cultural, sporting and development events per month. Compressed timetables. Flexible delivery. Onsite recruitment agency for part time work, including on campus.
Identify a need, meet it. That’s it.
Meet the specific needs of students. That’s what drives us daily at BNU.
The needs of students who have to work long hours, who have caring responsibilities, studying in a cost of living crisis.
Commuter kitchens at all campuses. Bringing a GP surgery on campus. Commuter accommodation at £35 1/