Inspiring Midlands tour! Huge thanks to colleagues at Warwick, Coventry, NTU, DMU & Leicester for exploring how we can support crisis-affected students via the Global Response Platform: mosaik.ngo/globalrespon... #HigherEd #UKHE

Great to see Prof. Tom Lawson deliver his inaugural lecture as VC of @uniofhull.bsky.social. Asking the timely question of ‘What are Universities for?’, the talk came to a powerful conclusion. In part - love. Love for their students. Love for their communities. Love for their region. #HigherEd #UKHE

Cracker of a newsletter from us this week! If you don't already, why not subscribe? #UKHE #UCU

Newsletter #28! Feat:

- @uonucu.bsky.social rally
- Our paper to this week's HEC on the Sullivan Review
- Education: It's Ours launch
- UCU response to Burnham speech
- Oil heir made Sustainability Prof at Newcastle
- THE/Orbán links
- TurnItI/AI scandal

#UCU #UKHE

ucucommons.org/ucu-commons-...

YAY! Tickets now available! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2026-a...

Stefan Collini on '"Serious, but not narrowly professional”: the idea of a university-based general periodical in post-war Britain'. Should make for great conversation about the role of universities in 'serious' public discourse #UKHE

The scale of the proposed cuts is staggering.

1,800 job losses... 1,800!

In just one institution. How is #UKHE crisis and its extensive impact not a bigger deal?

A new year of teaching starts today at @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social. We're blessed in the Warwick Mathematics Institute with wonderfully intelligent, friendly, and conscientious students. It's great to have them back, and to welcome a new cohort. #UKHE
warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/maths/

The cuts being made to humanities departments at UK HE institutions are reducing the opportunities that students have to study subjects like medieval literature, and amplifying pre-existing inequalities in the education system and beyond. Stop the cuts. #EnglishCreates #UCU #UKHE

Beautiful day on campus. Even with everything else that’s going on at Goldsmiths at the moment, start of term feels refreshing and re-energising. Like all the cool and interesting young weirdos of the world have turned up en masse in SE London and are ready to make stuff happen… It’s lovely

#ukhe

Might just… spend some time here today.

#UKHE

I'm co-I on a grant whose PI is at a very wealthy UK university. For over 14 months that university has failed to transfer my share of the award. Yesterday I asked them "would it be helpful if I contacted the funder tomorrow and explained the situation?" Today the money is being transferred. #UKHE

It could be that remaining internationally competitive at research requires access to Frontier #AI and millions of dollars in tokens. Can this access be provided via a shared national compute resource? In the UK, it seems unlikely #STFC could foot the bill given their current budget cutbacks. #UKHE

The ability to end these disruptive strikes lies in the hands of @uniofnottingham.bsky.social managers. The staff on strike are trying to save the university and the education of current and future students. #UCU #UKHE

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"If ownership and control matter because they determine whether wealth remains connected to a place or can be extracted from it, ministers need an account of why that reasoning applies to water, energy and transport but not to universities."

#HigherEd
#UKHE

wonkhe.com/blogs/whose-...

This is not a pro- or anti-#AI point. There is clearly a tension between maximising research outputs as measured in papers and grants, and investing time in training a new generation of mathematicians. Universities, research councils, and their KPIs will also influence our choices. #REF2029 #UKHE

the first UCU Brief on the failing HE funding model, authored by UCU VP @markpendleton.bsky.social, is out! This is exactly the sort of evidence and analysis we need to get in front of MPs and policymakers #UCU #UKHE

educationitsours.org.uk/ucu-briefs/

I worry that universities view the cost of providing access to an #LLM rather like an institutional subscription to Microsoft Office. They are unwittingly entering an arms race that only those organisations with very deep pockets can survive. #UKHE #MathSky

I’m old enough to remember when you could walk into a lab, throw a schedule and a few handouts around and start lecturing.

Now it is a major software engineering project every year to create the #blackboard VLE.

#scaffolding #UKHE

#AI “triaging” of UKRI grants. Yikes. I completely appreciate the struggle they have finding timely reviewers, but surely there’s a better way than this? #UKHE