UK HE News

Watching the slow-motion suicide of UK universities evolve into its next phase: fast-motion suicide.
also at

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

If your average VC were either (A) completely incompetent, but meant well and believed in the purpose of universities, or (B) completely corrupt but very clever at navigating economic and political realities, UK HE would probably still be doing ok.

[Jonathan Mills @Muinchille]

Their management went woke and are now going broke.

Investigations in the University of Aberdeen showed that while academics more than pay for themselves, the parts of the university steadily losing revenue was those for which management were directly responsible.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

In most cases, this year's redundancies only covered this year's deficits.

Unless there is some sort of recruitment surge, they will have to come back to this process.

[Financial Times @FT]

Several UK universities nearly ran out of cash last year, says report https://t.co/HqQZXVnD0f

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

Very important distinction between types of 'free AI for students,' which will become apparent as time goes on.

[Jen Brick Murtazashvili @jmurtazashvili]

The most important and effective uses of AI have little to do with writing.

I could put graduate students on AI-driven projects with me tomorrow. The university has no mechanism to let me. What U of C does solves that problem.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

If there's one thing we know about HE, it's that demand for STEM and professional degrees never fluctuates.

[SamuelGoldman @SWGoldman]

Much commentary on this. I read it as an admission that the UofC is throwing in the towel on liberal education. Will students still pay to hang around a research institute for natural and quantitative sciences that offers business degrees on the side? I truly don’t know.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

"if universities are preparing students to work and live in the real world..."

If only that were the sincere desire of university managers...

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

If universities are preparing students to work and live in the real world, and if the real world is increasingly run by AI, then it should not be surprising that universities are beginning to do this. I do not think this is such a tragedy, provided that teaching also changes to make sure students learn critical thinking while also learning how AI works. That is the only thing missing here: changing pedagogy to reflect the changes in technology and work. Unless something major changes, these students will be stepping into a world mostly run by AI. I wish this was not the case, but it is. Every major firm and institution now uses AI for at least some type of work. Medicine to banking, logistics to engineering. Even wars are now being fought with AI.

I still believe it is possible for students to use their brains and think critically while having AI in their lives. For this to happen, teaching must change radically. The real issue (except you want to blow up every data center and destroy all of AI) is, can universities change their teaching methods fast enough to catch up with technology (terrifying as it is)? There might be other solutions that will work, but outlawing AI and forcing everyone to write by hand is not one of them.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

Very social. Much justice.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

Facing a collapse in international master's student income, the Russell Group suddenly has an idea...

[Times Higher Education @timeshighered]

Elite UK universities are calling for an increase to the value of publicly funded master’s loans to ensure students from disadvantaged backgrounds can continue their studies. @jgro_the reports
https://t.co/cwMrXpEidm

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

I'm curious how seriously that will be treated by the upper levels of the process.

Accepting AI slop is at the core of the business model right now.

[The Incredible Halc @963Halc]

@HigherEd_UK I recently made some academic offence referrals due to AI use for undergrad dissertations. Points to note:
a) about 1/3 of the references don't exist
b) real references are used inappropritely
c) full of americanisms and US bias
d) factually incorrect
In summary, it's crap!

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

@PaulKetchley In this case, 'entry standards,' which are a function of reputation established many decades or centuries ago, determine the bulk of the top 10. The rest enter or exit the 'top 10' (or 20, 30, etc.) for no reason whatsoever related to improvement or failure in that year.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

League tables are one of those things in UKHE that, when telling outsiders how they work and are used, first elicit laughter, then shock, then sadness.

[Renaud Foucart @RenaudFoucart]

Ranking of universities and journals are a completely meaningless exercise and... what... wait.... WE RE TOP TEN AGAIN GOOD UNIVERSITY GUIDE 2027 IS AN EXCELLENT AND VERY ACCURATE RANKING COME STUDY IN LANCASTER TOP 1 IN THE NORTH WEST

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

@PaulKetchley The tables derived their weightings to keep the standing set of 'face valid' historical prestige reputations at the top. The rest of the list fluctuates wildly (up 10 points, then back) due to the terrible quality of the input data processed through those weightings.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

The below was written about the US, where the situation isn't even as bad yet.

Brace yourselves, folks.

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

I wonder if university academics as we know it will survive the next decade

With the demographic cliff, the increasing reliance on AI for writing academic papers, and the dissolution of public trust in institutional knowledge, the arguments in favor of academia are crumbling.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

Assume any text originating from a university manager is produced all or mostly by AI going forward.

Their corporate-speak boilerplate was pioneering in its mass slop generation, and automation is the natural next step, given their lack of interest in the content.

[M. J. Pardon @pardon_mi]

"sophisticated & appropriate" & yet everyone could tell immediately 🙄

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

@bescob_ar The shock and sadness are because everyone's priors internationally are that the UK has 'good universities.' So why would they do something so stupid to throw that away? Same reaction with the REF and any aspect of management.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

It's possible that, given current trends, university degrees will soon have a negative signalling value on the job market ('i.e., why did you waste time with that?').

Combine that with a uni leadership that could not be more useless for meeting the challenge.

[Julie Szego @JulieSzego]

Fantastic piece from @KMooreGilbert on our AI-led con that uni education is becoming. Schools also rightly get a mention. About time someone said it straight.
https://t.co/nfkRqgfDGC

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

@bescob_ar The trends are that beliefs about ROI of universities in the UK (and US) is crashing rapidly, and it is likely that it will be assumed that there not substantial challenges faced at uni (students have cheated with AI, management has inflated grades, etc).

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

"We have no choice..."

[Lawrence Zhang 張樂翔 @HistorianZhang]

Are we gonna get a headline next year about how Chicago ended up paying a billion to Anthropic and so have to shut down all their humanities departments?

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

The point of any VC's plan for income is always implementing *their* scheme, not an actual income-maximising scheme.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

We often say VCs were obsessed with income, but really that is misleading.

They were obsessed with their own salaries, which requires *pretending* to be a 'CEO' obsessed with income.

They didn't actually care about the income, so long as they had ownership over the schemes.

[UCU Ulster @UCU_Ulster]

Congratulations to Vice Chancellors, their cronies in senior leadership and a special mention to @UniversitiesUK / @UCEA1 👏👏👏👏👏👏

https://t.co/SVra8J26KD

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

So many staff members said this was going to happen. Now many of them are being made redundant as a consequence of being ignored.

[UK HE News @HigherEd_UK]

This is why managers as a class have to be systematically removed in order for there to be any future for universities.

[Dr. Michelle Anya Anjirbag-Reeve @Anjirbaguette]

The dearth of people running universities who understand that research is actually the point of a university is one of the biggest signs of the intellectual apocalypse we find ourselves within