CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
via RSS Feed
CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
via RSS Feed
CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector experience and expertise but also for their facilitative skills.
via RSS Feed
Universities welcome enquiries from prospective students. Contact the appropriate admissions departments for full entry requirements, and for detailed information on the content and the mode of delivery. The admissions department will also be able to tell you about any waiting lists for places.
Most courses are offered as full-time or part-time by day release. The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Aberystwyth University and Northumbria University in Newcastle offer distance learning options.
In addition, CILIP maintains a list of courses which have previously been accredited by either CILIP, the Library Association or the Institute of Information Scientists but which have since been withdrawn. Successful graduates from these accredited programmes are eligible to proceed towards Chartership (MCLIP). Please contact the Qualifications and Professional Development Department at CILIP for further information.
Aberdeen
Manchester
Newcastle Sheffieldvia RSS Feed
CILIP Onsite training courses focus on learning through interaction, discussion and participation. Our highly skilled trainers are chosen not just for their sector and expertise but also for their facilititative skills.
via RSS Feed
David Puttnam, Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, will consider the potential impact of a major, positive disruption to the way the world approaches learning and teaching at the JISC online e-learning conference on 22-25 November 2011.
Lord Puttnam, who is a renowned speaker and chairman of FutureLab, following a highly acclaimed career in the film industry, will share with participants his view on how pedagogy is going digital, in what is likely to be a controversial and challenging keynote.
Find out more in our special podcast about the conference, JISC on Air
Lord Puttnam is joined at the sixth annual JISC e-learning online conference by other expert speakers including:
Participants at the conference will be able to pose questions to the speakers and join in discussions from the comfort of their own workplace, using the Blackboard Collaborate platform followed by asynchronous discussions.
Sarah Knight, e-learning programme manager at JISC and event organiser said, “Taking part in an online conference is just as important as if you were attending in person. There will be ample opportunity to join in stimulating discussions and to share practice.
“This year the themes of ‘learning landscapes’ and ‘navigating pathways’ in the digital age, will be discussed focusing on the opportunities created by technology-enhanced assessment and feedback, digital literacy, open educational resources, lifelong learning and students as agents of change,” adds Sarah.
In order to help participants make full use of the networking and discussion opportunities, participants will be able to prepare for the event ahead of time in a pre-conference activity week.
Sarah concludes, “This year’s conference is one of the best yet, offering a big conference experience in the most cost-effective way. At £50 per delegate, it represents significant value for money for organisations and education departments feeling the constraints of a tight budget.”
Register now to explore through live presentations and debate some of the latest thinking about enhancing learning and teaching with technology.
Follow the conference on Twitter @jiscel2011 and online #jiscel11
via Jisc news
Safe cloud storage to help avoid the risks of lost or stolen data is now on offer to help three UK final year undergraduate and master's students run their research projects.
The cloud computing facilities are the winning prize in a competition that aims to highlight new projects demonstrate the potential of cloud computing.
The competition is run by Janet Brokerage, the UK’s only independent broker for academic cloud services, and Eduserv, the not-for-profit IT services organisation.
Andy Powell, Head of Research at Eduserv, said: "Research students and staff have an understandable tendency to keep data close to their chest on laptops or university servers. However, lost and stolen laptops or local server failures can put research projects back by months. By storing data in a secure facility tailored to the needs of the education community, with ample capacity and processing power, academics can rest assured that their data is secure and accessible."
The winners will benefit from a package including a VMware vCloud virtual data centre which can support up to around 18 virtual machines.
They will have access to 100GB storage, enough to store the equivalent of about 125 doctoral theses, and one public IP address. They will also have a direct connection to the JANET network, with no additional transit fees.
The winners will have use of Eduserv's Education Cloud from January 2012 to January 2013.
The first forty bids will be able to enter the competition from 18 November 2011. Bidding closes at midday on Friday 2 December, or once forty bids have been received, whichever is the sooner.
Find out more about how cloud computing could benefit your organisation.
For more information about Janet Brokerage call 01225 822337, and to find out more about the services Eduserv offer visit their website or call 01235 474300.
via Jisc news
Entries for the 2012 award have now closed. Shortlisted entries will be announced in Spring 2012 and the winner will be announced on the 26 June 2012.
The judges are representatives from CILIP's Community Services Group.
The Community Services Group of CILIP is interested in promoting community cohesion through the use of library and information services to empower people and improve their quality of life. The group also helps in developing CILIP policy on social justice and community engagement.
Each year three members of the Community Services Group volunteer their time as judges for this prestigious award. Part of the vigorous judging process includes intensive project visits for the judges to decide on the finalists, and eventually, the winning project.
A project must be:
Before completing your entry, consider how your project fits with the overall aims and objectives of the award - the judges will assess each entry looking for the following:
The judges' decisions are final. They reserve the right to withhold or withdraw the Award at their own discretion.
Entries for the 2012 awards closed on Monday 13 February 2012.via RSS Feed
Customer service aims
Emails
All emails to membership@cilip.org.uk will be responded to as quickly as possible. In most cases members will receive a reply within one working day. During particularly busy times (e.g. December to March, when most members are renewing) it may take us two to three days to respond.
Telephone calls
Wherever possible we will answer your call in person. Occasionally you will be put through to our voicemail because the phones are all in use; the team is in a meeting; or you have called outside our office hours of 9am –5pm. Please leave us a message and we will call you back within one working day.
Written correspondence
We will reply to written correspondence within five working days.
Membership applications
It takes around two to three weeks from receiving your membership form and payment for us to process a membership application and send out a welcome pack.
Please note that this will increase during peak times,(e.g. January to March, when most members are renewing)
Membership renewals
At peak times (December to March), when we are receiving a very high volume of forms and payments, it can take two to three weeks for us to process a membership renewal. Please don’t contact us to progress your renewal unless it’s urgent. The time it takes to deal with queries such as ‘Has my payment been processed?’ slows the whole process down and could result in further delay.
Receipts
If you would like a receipt for your subscription payment please include a stamped address envelope with your application or renewal form. Receipts are processed once or twice a week so please allow up to seven days to receive it and slightly longer during peak times.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with the service you have received from us please write to:
Lisa Goldsmith
Membership Administration Manager
CILIP
7 Ridgmount Street
London
WC1E 7AE
Or email membership@cilip.org.uk and mark it for the attention of the Membership Administration Manager
via RSS Feed
Click here to feed your university's statistics into our dedicated website
As we prepare the next Guardian University Guide, we invite universities and colleges to check that we are on the right track when it comes to matching subjects with cost centres and Jacs codes – the subject categories used by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).
A dedicated website is used to simplify the process.
The Guardian University Guide uses Hesa data to calculate indicators such as spending per student and staff/student ratios, and it is vital for us to match up subjects and cost centres to reflect the performance of institutions.
Default mappings are offered as a guide that provides some consistency across the sector in representing how different subjects are provided.
We are giving all institutions the chance to make sensible adjustments to these mappings to reflect their particular course or departmental structures.
We are also requesting that institutions take the opportunity to refine the tuition fee information that we will be publishing in February's Postgraduate University Guide.
To access the system, each institution must register for a system account with mapping@intelligentmetrix.co.uk using a .ac.uk email address.
The deadline for submissions is 20 January 2012. If you have any queries about the mapping exercise, please email mapping@intelligentmetrix.co.uk.
The University Guide 2013 will be published in May on EducationGuardian.co.uk.
The mapping website is at www.intelligentmetrix.co.uk
This week on the Guardian Teacher Network, you will find resources for teaching pupils all about Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, focusing on conflict and peace
Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday, both this week, provide the perfect opportunity for pupils to reflect on the events of the First World War and the continuing impact of conflict around the world.
A good starting place is the Royal British Legion's learning pack. Updated every year, it contains a wealth of lesson ideas for KS2-4 on the themes of remembrance, conflict and the importance of peace. The pack, which also contains a copy of the First World War poem In Flanders Fields, is supported by six posters that can be downloaded for free.
Remembrance is the topic of two lesson packs produced by The British Postal Museum & Archive, one for primary schools and one for secondary schools. The packs encourage pupils to link their everyday experiences with people in the past and to gain an appreciation of the impact the First World War had on British society at that time.
The developments that led to Armistice Day are covered in the Guardian Teacher Network lesson The Great War Comes to an End, suitable for use at KS3.
Never Forget is the theme of a useful assembly, with accompanying teachers' notes, produced by Christian Aid. Suitable for use at KS2, it starts by looking at Siegfried Sassoon's plea to remember the horrors of the First World War in his poem Aftermath. It then explores the need for remembrance by focusing on two communities affected by recent conflict in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here, as in Sassoon's poem, it is the memory of war that encourages people to strive for peace.
Poppyscotland has a wealth of Remembrance Day-themed teaching materials linked to the Scottish curriculum. Lesson plans and worksheets are available for a range of activities that consider the importance of remembrance and the significance of the poppy. Ideas include designing a Remembrance Day card and planning a garden of remembrance.
As a primary source material to inspire creative writing, history and drama projects, these recordings by British soldiers captured during the Second World War are extremely useful. Find out how Far East Prisoner of War Fergus Anckhorn used to perform magic tricks to get food in the labour camps, or how a monkey helped Cyril Jones to survive.
The continuing impact of conflict around the world is covered in this citizenship-based lesson by the charity War Child. Pupils are encouraged to think about conflict in general, including its causes and consequences, before investigating three countries where conflict has been an issue recently – Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Bruce Liddington, boss of the academy sponsor E-Act, outlines his mission 'to improve the lot of the most-deprived children', his plans for expansion and the rationale behind his very high salary
Life has been good to Sir Bruce Liddington. He has come a long way from his roots in a working-class area of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, where his father was a stonemason and his mother worked in a shoe factory. At 62, the director-general of E-Act (formerly Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust), sitting in his London West End office, looks healthy, well-fed and pleased with himself. So he should. One of New Labour's poster boys, he is often said to be the highest-paid person in education, which is not strictly true since a few university vice-chancellors get more. But the latest published accounts of E-Act, which has charitable status, reveal a pay package of £280,017 in the year to 31 August 2010 – nearly twice what Michael Gove, the education secretary, receives – not bad for a job that involves responsibility for just 14 academies and free schools and an annual budget of less than £60m.
Empire building
It seems, however, that Liddington's job is not so much to run a handful of schools as to build an empire. E-Act will have at least 10 more schools by next September and, earlier this year, Liddington told a newspaper it planned to open a "super-chain" of 250 within five years, making it bigger than all but a handful of local education authorities. He is now oddly coy about this perhaps hubristic projection, saying he isn't sure the E-Act board ever agreed to 250 and it just wanted "responsible growth".
Last December, a new company, E-Act Enterprises, was formed. It will sell "intellectual property" and services such as school improvement, and possibly set up fee-paying schools abroad. The company can make profits, but 100% of these, Liddington says, "will be ploughed back into our English academies", providing extra funding for scholarships, prizes, staff and experiences for pupils. "This is the 21st-century form of academy sponsorship," he adds. He tells me that selling services to E-Act itself is "not on the cards". Will he, as one of two directors, receive pay from E-Act Enterprises? "Absolutely and totally no." Does he think companies running academies should themselves be allowed to make profits? "We have no public position on this but, personally, I think it's inevitable if the government continues to develop its intervention in schools. Existing chains don't have the capacity to upscale."
All this is regarded with a certain wariness by other academy providers. The education world is uncomfortable with words such as "profit" and "expansion" and academy and free school supporters sense that E-Act and its director-general are slightly off-message.
Perhaps this explains why Liddington's tone is so determinedly non-confrontational. For example, I ask for E-Act's unique selling point, the single thing that distinguishes it from other academy chains. "That's difficult without implying that other academy chains are less good," he says. After much hesitation, he continues: "We are relentless in seeking the highest levels of attainment where attainment levels have been extremely low before. Our purpose is to improve the lot of the poorest and most deprived children in this country. Most of our schools are in deprived areas and we are considerably above average in the number of our children with special educational needs."
You might expect Liddington to be an eloquent critic of local authorities' shortcomings and a proselytiser for the private sector, particularly since, when he worked at the Department for Education, he played a leading role in getting academies launched. But again he is cautious. "It's a complete myth that local authorities do nothing about failing schools. They have sought to intervene. But we still have some schools that aren't at the required level, so something else has to be tried. I don't have a council to run or potholes to worry about. So we can be very focused. We're able to function very efficiently. We top-slice 5%. That's considerably less than almost all LEAs top-sliced five years ago, and still less than most do now."
That may be so, but it doesn't mean much unless you know exactly what E-Act provides. Its schools get financial, human resources, IT and other such services, but E-Act doesn't, for example, employ special needs advisers, as local authorities usually do. As a proportion of budget, Liddington's pay must be several multiples higher than that of any local authority chief executive, and E-Act employs 10 others earning at least £100,000 a year. I ask him to justify his pay packet, the size of which he professes not to know. "This is an organisation at the cutting edge," he replies. "I know, as chief executive, that I have to be creative about getting good people here, and you have to look at the market and decide what you have to pay. It's not up to me to decide what I'm paid. It's a matter for the board who invited me to show an interest in the job."
What of the expenses (Liddington claimed £14,075 in 2009-10, according to the accounts) that attracted press comment last year, with allegations that he and other directors used "chauffeur-driven … limousines" to visit academies? "I run a four-year-old car and don't drive often," says Liddington. "Most of our academies are on the West Coast Main Line and I use that. There are no limos." He inadvertently claimed a large bill for two nights in a posh Birmingham hotel but, after the receipts were leaked, paid it back. "We have the most austere travel and hospitality that exists. We use Skype so we don't have to travel so much."
Liddington attended Wellingborough grammar school, where his ambition was to be a railway chef "because I liked cooking and I liked trains". But he "ached" to go to university and became the first in his family to do so. Between completing A-levels and starting at London University's Queen Mary College (as it then was), he taught at the local boys' secondary modern – "you didn't need a qualification; it was the gap year of my generation" – and enjoyed it so much he resolved to be a teacher.
After taking first-class honours in English, he did his PGCE at King's College, Cambridge, where one visiting speaker was the late Sir Alec Clegg, chief education officer of Yorkshire's West Riding and among the most prominent educational figures of the day. Clegg believed schools should pursue "the education of the spirit … the child's loves and hates … hopes and fears". It doesn't sound very New Labour but Liddington was inspired to teach in Conisbrough, a deprived mining community in the West Riding. "Professionally," says Liddington "I've always been attracted to kids who've had a hard time in life." Was he very leftwing as a young man? "I was quite leftwing. I wore jeans with holes and long hair. I was chairman of my Labour party ward. But that was as far as it went."
He was, he says, less inspired by Clegg's ideas at the end of three years in Conisbrough. "There were very low levels of aspiration and I found that frustrating." He did an MA at Washington State University in the US, where he met his wife, a teacher who later switched to employment law and became a judge.
He re–turned to become a head of department and then a deputy head. He didn't want a headship "because it was scary" and applied to HMI. But the inspectorate turned him down, so he became a head after all, at Northampton school for boys, a former grammar school fallen on hard times, with only 9% of pupils achieving five GCSEs at A-C. His success in turning the school round made his reputation and secured a knighthood in 2000.
"E-Act embodies what I did there. One teacher said working for me was like being on one long in-service training course. Poor performance is not acceptable to me. I don't do poor performance myself and I don't see why anyone else should." Every E-Act school principal is set a target of improving GCSE results by 10% a year. He has little patience with those who argue that, in some circumstances, failure is inevitable. "People ask if poverty has an impact on school achievement. I say of course it does, unless you do something about it."
Under him, Northampton grammar opted out of local authority control and became grant-maintained. I await an exposition of the liberationist case and examples of LEA oppression. But again he shies away. "I never fell out with the LEA. The school was heavily supported by the county council." The governors were sympathetically inclined to a Thatcher government policy, "but, for 18 months, I said I thought we were OK with the local authority". He was "eventually persuaded" that opting out "was the right thing to do".
He left Northampton to work part-time at the education department in 2000, advising on performance management. He switched to advising on academies – "I was involved in all the practical stuff about getting them off the ground" – before becoming a full-time civil servant and then, from 2006, the schools commissioner. "My job was to be the national champion for choice."
Bullied out?
He left to go to E-Act in 2009, a move that attracted criticism, though he acted within the rules. Barry Sheerman, then children's select committee chairman, suggested he was "bullied out" by the Labour secretary of state Ed Balls who wanted to row back on academies. Liddington protests, perhaps too much, that Balls was "courteous, intelligent and fascinating to work for" and argues that Sheerman and Balls, being from different generations, use the word "bully" in different senses. Did he have disagreements with Balls? "No, I was a senior civil servant. You don't disagree with ministers."
Yes, there was an ironic tone and a faint smile. Liddington says that, unlike his father, he has never done anything with his hands. But he is a practical man all the same who knows how to get things done, which is not by rocking boats or sticking your neck out too far. "On the surface, a quintessential Sir Humphrey figure," was how one prominent educational figure summed him up. "But he seems to have his own agenda, and I'm not sure what it is."
Anarchist group Etonleaks promises to make life uncomfortable for old boys, and new, plus the college that is training guards for ships
Eton mess
The annual meeting of Eton's old boys' network, due to be held in London last week, didn't quite go to plan. In the run-up, an anarchist group known as the Etonleaks Collective organised an "anti-Eton" march from St Paul's cathedral to the City law firm Withers LLP, where the AGM was due to be held, as a protest against elitism in education. One of the demo organisers, Ian Bone, claims on his website that the meeting was called off due to "fears of public disorder".
Jackie Tarrant-Barton, clerk to the Old Etonians told Education Guardian that the association did not wish to comment on the matter. A spokesperson for Withers LLP confirmed that the meeting was not held in its offices as planned, and that a "small rally" did go ahead, but would not comment on whether the meeting was held at a different venue.
The protest appears to be part of a wider campaign from the group against the top public school. A recent post on Bone's website invites "whistleblowers" to send "documents from Eton" via a dedicated email address, and claims to have received papers uncovering all sorts of dodgy – and, my goodness, surely inconceivable – practices at the school, including tax avoidance and "hush, hush foreign investments". But with an "Occupy Eton" event scheduled for later in the month, when protesters plan to march on the school grounds against "future privileged social parasites" there may be be further discomfort ahead for the top public school. Eton College did not respond to requests to comment from Education Guardian.
Gun-ho
The seaside town of Blackpool might not be the first place you'd rush to to learn how to use lethal weapons on the high seas, but a new course from Blackpool and the Fylde College is teaching just that. Thought to be the first of its kind, the 10-day vessel protection officer course teaches students everything they need to know to guard against piracy at sea, including putting out fires and "managing" dangerous weapons.
The majority of students – mostly ex-military personnel – are already trained to use guns. Some have worked as security officers on ships, but it's to Blackpool they are heading for to find out how to use their weapons in the event of a pirate attack. At the college's Fleetwood nautical campus they can find out how to set off flares or use lines of live ammunition around the ship to prevent pirates approaching. They also learn when and how it is "appropriate" to return fire.
The course was launched two months ago in anticipation of last week's government announcement that British vessels are to be allowed to carry armed guards to protect them from pirates. Tony Dumbell, head of maritime operations at the college thinks the course has never been more necessary. "These guys [the pirates] can be really dangerous. We need to make sure ships have people with the skills to cope in an emergency."
The government says it is working on school improvement but, argues Fiona Millar, academies and free schools seem to be the only strategy – and they are not necessarily working
Last month I wrote an article here responding to Michael Gove's speech to the Tory Party conference. On the day it appeared, I was contacted via Twitter by one of the Secretary of State's senior policy advisers, Sam Freedman.
For those who don't know of Mr Freedman, let me explain. He is a former Tory policy adviser turned government official at the Department for Education (DfE) who, in spite of his civil servant status, is an active user of social media to promote Conservative party education policy.
His complaint was that if only I could look beyond free schools and academies, I would see other important common ground between this government and the last when it came to school improvement. He singled out the work of Labour's London Challenge, which he claimed was being continued in the new generation of teaching schools.
It is, in fact, quite hard to look beyond academies and free schools, since they dominate so much of what his department says and does. The coalition's recognition of Labour achievements in office has also passed me by in the torrent of speeches designed to trash the previous government's record.
Nevertheless, the London Challenge point is an interesting one. A dominant strand in Labour's school improvement strategy for the last decade (and latterly extended to two other regions), it must have some important lessons.
The reasons why London Challenge was so effective are set out in the final Ofsted report before the programme was wound down in 2011. The opening summary is succinct. "Programmes of support for schools are planned, with experienced and credible London Challenge advisers using a shared and accurate audit of need. Excellent system leadership and pan-London networks of schools allow effective partnerships to be established between schools, enabling needs to be tackled quickly and progress to be accelerated."
Ofsted highlighted other striking features: the clear sense of moral purpose among teachers and school leaders; their commitment to all London children; their sense of pride in being part of a city-wide education service, irrespective of whether they were receiving or providing support; their appreciation of effective professional development opportunities, use of data and well supported interventions for individual children.
By the time the programme ended, less than 1% of London secondary schools were below government floor targets and 30% were judged "outstanding". Moreover, statistics released by the DfE last month show that London is now the most highly performing region in the country on the GCSE measure of five A* to Cs including English and maths. Some of the capital's most deprived boroughs, such as Tower Hamlets (incidentally without any academies or free schools), chalked up results this year that are comparable with Mr Gove's leafy Surrey and knock spots off the performance of the prime minister's affluent Oxfordshire.
So back to Mr Freedman. How much of this work is being carried on and scaled up? Judging by the DfE website, very little. True, 100 teaching schools have been approved (out of 23,000 schools), but this was only one element in the London Challenge's highly tuned, multi-faceted approach.
Other crucial elements – centrally resourced strategic partnerships, advisers, focus on teaching and learning, have gone. Moreover, budget cuts mean local authorities are increasingly under-resourced and relatively powerless.
It is worth asking if there is in fact any coherent school improvement strategy being proposed by Mr Freedman's department. The only evidence on the DfE website is a letter from Mr Gove to local authorities, asking them to set out their plans for schools below government floor targets, and a press release explaining that another civil service tweeter, schools commissioner Dr Elizabeth Sidwell, will then step in and broker sponsorship with an academy chain.
Yet even Dr Sidwell recently admitted to having concerns about a significant number of sponsored academies that appear to be stuck, unwittingly reinforcing the point that structural solutions do not necessarily equal school improvement. The fate of those schools is presumably to be passed from one edu-chain to another until they start to progress.
In fact, the government's education policy increasingly resembles its questionable plans for the economy and the health service. All have the same basic features: set out a clear ideologically driven path that runs counter to most evidence, then hold on for dear life and hope it works. Unless I am missing something blindingly obvious, there is no plan B for schools, in spite of what Sam Freedman says.
Many lecturers who are 'working to contract' over a pensions dispute are finding that they suddenly have time for their families
The differences to Fiona Patrick's working practices in recent weeks are subtle, but they have been, she says, an "absolute revelation". The lecturer at Glasgow University's school of education has been reading a book or newspaper on the hour-long train journey to and from work, rather than desperately catching up on admin tasks or poring over research articles. During the day, she's been taking the odd half-hour break for a cup of coffee and even, occasionally, to chat to a colleague. And she has had the physical and mental energy to play with her seven-year-old daughter when she gets home without feeling as if all she's capable of is collapsing into bed.
Patrick, along with 40,000 other members of the University and College Union (UCU) in 67 pre-1992 universities, has been "working to contract" since 10 October in a dispute over changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions. She is also one of around 250 academics – three-quarters of them female – the union says have been in touch detailing how they have now realised just how much the extra hours they put in have affected their lives.
"I've just been inundated," says Sally Hunt, UCU's general secretary. "People are saying that for the first time in years they've been able to have some kind of normal life. It's clear it has become very normalised for people to work 50-plus hours in a week, doing evening and weekend work. We've got very committed staff who are struggling to fulfil their research commitments alongside admin and teaching, and that will only get worse with the pressures they're having to deal with."
She has been particularly struck by the impact on younger women and those with childcare responsibilities: "It's been absolutely stark. They're saying the action has enabled them to get some work-life balance back. It's shocking that it's taken this to do that."
Patrick realised she had regularly been working 45 or 50 hours a week. "When you're working flat out you don't have the time to really know how stressed you are," she says, adding that she is not criticising her university.
"Sticking to my contracted 35 hours has shown me that work was almost taking over my whole life. If you're conscientious, what inevitably happens when you've too much work to fit in is that you take it home. I haven't taken lunch breaks since I can't remember when.
"It's a bit of a cliche, but working to contract has been like having a weight lifted off my shoulders. I've still got the same amount of work to do, but it's just getting that breathing space that makes the difference: you begin to look at what you have to do and prioritise it, instead of feeling that everything has to be done as quickly as possible and feeling guilty when it isn't.
"At the moment I'm prioritising everything to do with the needs of my students. I will make time for the things I usually worry about, for example research, when students are out on placement and teaching contact drops."
Key duties are still being carried out, but extras such as sitting on external committees, outreach work with the public and requests for extra seminars may get turned down.
For Martine Turgeon, who works in Lancaster University's psychology department, sticking to her 40 hours a week, instead of between 45 and 60, has given her the chance to spend more time with her seven-year-old son. But it raises problems, too. "I'm very behind and I feel I'm letting down my students. There are simply too many urgent things to do in a normal full-time week for a lecturer to cope. Forty hours is not enough to do the teaching and research required of me."
Kathy Romer, a senior lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Sussex, hadn't even realised she was working more than her contracted hours until she totted up the previous week's work and discovered it came to 55 hours. Because she needs to leave work before 4.30pm to collect her children from after-school club, she has to put in two hours in the evening even when working to rule – or get up and start work at 5am. But since starting the union action, she has been freer to enjoy weekends with them.
"I still work three or more hours at the weekend, but that's less than before and, most importantly, I'm not feeling guilty when I'm doing something else," says Romer, who teaches 100 undergraduates on two courses and five research students, as well as running careers training for undergraduates and doing research work. "I was able to take my kids out on Saturday without having to worry about work.
"I don't feel like I am drowning, and feel in control of my life, for the first time in a while."
Imposing limits has stopped her feeling "panicked" by the volume of work to be done, and she believes that the consequent feeling of greater control may even be improving the quality of her work.
"I don't think my students or the university are suffering – perhaps even the reverse. I feel more able to do my job. The last thing any academic wants to do is something that disadvantages their students. We just can't stand doing it.
"I didn't want to … take any action. But I thought I could support this because it's nothing anyone could say is against the students." All the women we spoke to stressed that they were talking personally and not on behalf of their university.
So what happens when the action ends? Patrick says she will make sure she talks to her line manager about how to control her workload, and aim not to just keep taking on extra work.
And Hunt says universities can expect to hear more from the union on the subject. "I've argued for a long time that we should look at workloads, and for a long time we've had nice words back from the employers," she says.
"It's no longer something where nice words tell me they're taking it seriously. This is clear evidence that the sector has been relying on the goodwill of our members, and getting away with doing so for too long."
Computers have saved us all time, but what have we done with it? asks Jonathan Wolff
There was great excitement the year I started lecturing in the philosophy department. Not, sadly, about me, but because we had obtained, for the first time, a usable computer in the department. It was placed in an attic room, and I would get to work at eight in the morning to use it for two – well, OK, three – hours, before anyone else rolled in.
It was several years before we each had our own computer. And a few weeks later, all were gone. Security, covering their backs, insinuated that one of the faculty must have turned up over the weekend in a hired Ford Transit. But now that the department actually possessed things worth stealing, the university installed some industrial-strength locks. We bought some more computers and tried again, thereby learning other new ways in which modern technology can routinely ruin your mood.
It is hard to think back to academic life before computers. I was there only as a witness. My teachers used to write out the drafts of their books and papers by hand, with expensive, though smudgy, fountain pens, and the departmental secretaries would type them up over the summer break. The secretaries also had to type all student references and important correspondence. No more, of course.
Every few years, another computing triumph was achieved. Email saved the time and trouble of printing letters, folding them up and putting them in envelopes. The internet, eventually, put the resources of a reference library on your desk. And, in the last couple of years, the widespread electronic availability of journal articles has cut out the need to root through dusty shelves and stand in line at the photocopier.
Just as the end of the Cold War was meant to produce a "peace dividend", we should now be experiencing a "technology dividend", luxuriating in the spare time we have created for ourselves. But what has happened to all that time saved?
I vaguely recall a story in which the central character did everything he could to save time, counting out the seconds banked. But at the end of each day he realised, to his despair, that just as much time had gone as usual, whatever he did. Beckett makes the point the other way round: Vladimir: "Well, that passed the time." Estragon: "It would have passed anyway."
Innovations are introduced with the promise that they will save time, or money, or make us safer or more comfortable. But, as my UCL colleague John Adams observed, innovations can have a perverse effect. Notoriously, he claimed that when seat belts were introduced, people simply took more risks when they drove. If we really want road safety, he suggests, we should put a sharpened spike right in the middle of the steering wheel. Then you'd watch your braking distance.
Karl Marx noticed something similar. In early industrial Britain, he reports, a factory boy modified his machine in order to complete his day's work in a couple of hours, and laze around the rest of the time. So impressed was the factory owner that he modified all the machines and multiplied the production targets.
I'm hardly the first to point out that instead of consuming the time-saving benefits of information technology by making the work day less pressured, we have found other ways of filling up the time. Now that we have such whizzy computers, university administrators can do valuable things that we had no time for before, such as making sure every member of the department has signed a piece of paper swearing that they know where the fire exits are.
And what, as an academic, do I do with the hours and minutes I save by not having to traipse off to the library each time I need to check a reference? I would like to tell you that I have finally taken up the tuba, or, at the least, am using the time for ever deeper reflection. But the truth is I still begin every email with the line "Sorry to be slow replying, it has been exceptionally busy over the last few days".
• Jonathan Wolff is professor of philosophy at University College London. His column appears monthly
Queen's We Are the Champions is officially the number 1 catchiest song, say academics
Do you belt out your favourite song in the bath when it comes on the radio? Sing along as you're driving, at a gig, cleaning the loo or just walking to work plugged into your Shuffle? And what is it about a song that catches our attention and makes us want sing our hearts out?
It's a question that led to a lot of hanging out in nightclubs for musicologist Dr Alisun Pawley, as she tried to find the answer. Clearly, some research projects are more fun than others.
"I got the idea when I was living in Newcastle and on a night out," she explains. "I was watching people singing along to "Hey baby," by DJ Otzi – big huddles of men really going for it. The physicality of it, the vigour ... it was really tribal."
Pawley, an academic working at Kendal College, who performs and teaches as well as analysing music, wondered exactly what elements in music make a song particularly sing-alongable.
To find out the answer, it was time to go clubbing. "I did 30 nights' research – six nights at five venues – to get a good range of demographic," she explains. "We chose a small pub in York, a student nightclub, a trendy gay bar in Leeds, an indie rock bar in Manchester and a big nightclub in Kendal."
With a research assistant to help her do the count, Pawley hit the dancefloor "undercover", with a dictaphone that passed for a mobile, and started monitoring who was singing along to what.
She also noted factors such as time of night, whether it was a weekday or a weekend, how well a song was doing in the charts and when it was released – all elements that might influence how willing people were to fling off their inhibitions and give their lungs a workout.
"I had an internal rule that if about 80% of the people were singing, I was allowed to sing myself, so I wasn't putting anyone off," she laughs.
Given that each track was only a few minutes long, assessing how many people had got sucked into a catchy number was tricky in a dark nightclub environment – if it was small numbers, she counted during the chorus when most people were singing, but with larger groups, it had to be an estimate.
Another problem arose when Pawley didn't know the name of the track straight away, though a phone app solved that one; recording the music then playing it into her phone allowed the app to identify most songs.
Thousands of people were monitored for their responses to over 1,000 songs and, perhaps predictably, the student night had the highest percentage of people singing along. The lowest proportion of warblers were found in the cool indie bar in Manchester. But it was the factors that incentivised people to sing that really took Pawley by surprise.
"I thought the musical structures of the song would be more influential, but it turns out the most important thing is the vocal aspect – how the singer sings," she says.
The subject of a song and the sentiment described by the lyrics don't really matter, either. Whether you're singing miserably or happily about love, banging out a political war cry or rapping about how society has treated you wrong, what makes a tune really catchy, Pawley found, is if it's sung in a high voice, with lots of energy, by a male singer, using clear consonants so you can make out the words, and without much elaborate dancing around the melody.
"One of my hypotheses was that the catchy songs would fall in a smaller range of notes, so it would be comfortable for both males and females to sing along to – but that wasn't significant," says Pawley. "Bon Jovi in Livin' On A Prayer goes up really high at the end, but it doesn't put people off."
The more words a singer can manage in one breath, the more likely ordinary punters are to succumb to a sing-song, and the more sounds there are in a chorus, the more infectious it gets.
Once she had worked out which songs got most people going – Queen's We Are The Champions came in at number one – Pawley gave her results to Goldsmiths music psychologist Dr Daniel Müllensiefen, who extracted the data that explains the blueprint behind a catchy song.
A few songs in the top 10 came as a surprise. "The Sum 41 and Wheatus songs are the most surprising in terms of not being 'classic' anthems," says Pawley. "They were very popular in the student nights I observed at the time the research was carried out, which demonstrates that more 'niche' songs can be popular sing-along songs within certain subcultures at a certain moment in time."
While nobody joining in their favourite chorus in a nightclub will realise it, Müllensiefen says that every musical hit is reliant on maths, science, engineering and technology for its effects.
"We've discovered that there's a science behind the sing-along and a special combination of neuroscience, maths and cognitive psychology can produce the elusive elixir of the perfect sing-along song," he explains. "We hope our study will inspire musicians of the future to crack the equation of the textbook tune."
Reports to: Office of the President
Terms of Reference:-
(The above information is taken from CILIP's General Regulation No.62)
Date Constituted: 1st January 2009
Chair:
Biddy Fisher MLib FCLIP (Biddy.Fisher@cilip.org.uk)
Membership:
Susan Cook MCLIP
Peter Griffiths BA(Hons) FCLIP MCLIP
Tom Houghton BSc DipLib DPA MCLIP MBA
Hettie Jones BSc MSc DipEd MCLIP
via RSS Feed
Research suggests that the shape of a chief executive's head can show whether he will be successful
A new line of American-British research suggests that the shape of a chief executive officer's head can indicate how well his firm will prosper. The shape also predicts whether the chief executive will act immorally.
The research offers a mathematical tool that financial analysts can add to their professional kit bag: the chief executive officer's facial width-to-height ratio. The "chief executive facial WHR", for short.
The research and its financial implications are outlined in a study called A Face Only an Investor Could Love: Chief Executive Facial Structure Predicts Firm Financial Performance, to be published in the journal Psychological Science.
The authors, Elaine Wong and Michael Haselhuhn at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Margaret Ormiston at London Business School, explain the significance of their work. Prior researchers, they say, failed "to empirically identify physical traits that predict leadership success" or predict "the ability of leaders to achieve organisational goals".
Their discovery, in their view, constitutes a breakthrough: "We identify a specific physical trait, facial structure, of leaders that correlates with organisational performance. Specifically, chief executive officers with wider faces (relative to facial height) achieve superior firm financial performance."
The story is not always that simple, the researchers caution, nor is it guaranteed: "The relationship between chief executive facial structure and financial performance is moderated by the decision-making dynamics of the leadership team."
Wong, Haselhuhn and Ormiston painstakingly examined the financial performance and chief executive facial measurements of General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Nike and 52 other publicly traded Fortune 500 organisations for the period 1996-2002. The companies are big, averaging $38bn in annual sales and about 120,000 employees.
Wong, Haselhuhn and Ormiston obtained chief executive facial photos from the internet, using them as raw data from which to calculate each chief executive facial WHR. They looked up each firm's return on assets (in financial industry shorthand, the "ROA"), using that as the measure of the company's financial performance.
Wong and Haselhuhn spell out their logic in a study called Bad to the Bone: Facial Structure Predicts Unethical Behavior, published a few months ago in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
They tell of experiments conducted on students, which showed "that men with wider faces (relative to facial height) are more likely to explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation, and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain".
They explain the mechanism that might make this happen. Prior research indicated that wide-faced men are "associated with more aggressive behavior". If "observers respond to facial cues by deferring to men whom they perceive to be aggressive based on their facial WHR, these men may find it easier to take advantage of others. Similarly, if men with greater facial WHRs are treated in ways that make them feel more powerful, this may foster a psychological sense of power, which then affects ethical judgement and behavior".
The facial indicators, say the researchers, are more reliable in men than in women.
• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize
Martyn Harrow, Director of Information Services at Cardiff University, has been appointed as Head of JISC for a fixed term of 9-18 months from 1 February 2012.
Martyn will succeed Dr Malcolm Read who retires as Head of JISC in January 2012 after 18 years in post.
Martyn will see the organisation through its transition into a 'new look' JISC, following the recommendations of the Wilson Review (February 2011).
Heather Fry, Director Education and Participation at HEFCE, which funds JISC together with other UK education funding bodies JISC, said: 'At this critical time in JISC's transition I am delighted that we have appointed Martyn Harrow who brings a wealth of technology and leadership experience from higher education and the commercial sector. Martyn will be leading JISC as it re-shapes to remain world class in a changing environment.'
Tim O'Shea, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Chair of JISC, said: 'JISC is embarking on an exciting period as it rises to the challenges of the Wilson report and renews its focus on supporting education and research across the UK. Martyn is ideally placed to lead JISC through this stage of its development, being able to draw on invaluable experience from across the education, public and private sectors.'
Martyn Harrow said: 'It is an honour to follow Malcolm Read and be invited to lead JISC through this very important and complex transition. We have the opportunity and the challenge now of building on from his amazing legacy to create a "new JISC for new times". Our driver will be to ensure that "new JISC" fosters, facilitates and enables modern approaches and sustainable strategic advantage for higher and further education in the coming years.'
Dr Malcolm Read OBE has led JISC since its inception and taken it to the world-class reputation it enjoys today, enabling it to make a real difference to ICT usage in further and higher education. He is looking forward to his planned retirement and more time to pursue his many interests and ambitions.
Martyn Harrow joined Cardiff University in 2003 with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. His early career centred in local government where he became Senior Principal Management Services Officer at Avon County Council. Subsequently his career majored on global roles as Chief Information Officer for several international operating companies within Unilever. At various times he was responsible for IT across the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Before joining Cardiff University, Martyn was Vice-President, IT, for a global food and fragrance company within ICI. Martyn is a member of the JISC Board and a Director of JISC Collections and JISC Advance.
via Jisc news
The UK is to participate in a global experiment, based on the social media technology behind Twitter and Facebook, to find out how the social activity around online educational content can be captured and fed back to users, creators and publishers.
Working with the Learning Registry, a project funded by the US Department of Education and the US Department of Defence, JISC and the HE Academy are calling for institutions and developers to work with them on a new 10 month project. This project will lay the foundations of an infrastructure that will improve the way people choose educational information online.
Amber Thomas, JISC programme manager says, “This international collaboration will see us contributing the UK’s expertise to the Learning Registry. We are working with Mimas and JISC CETIS to support the Registry’s vision of gathering together the conversations, ratings, recommendations and usage data around digital content.
“We know that users and providers want access to more information about how educational content is used by others and this is an innovative approach to meeting that need.”
It is commonplace to read reviews of books, music and items before your choose to buy or use them. This experiment will look to assess how we can create the technical capabilities to reveal a rich picture of what people are doing with educational content.
Steve Midgley, Deputy Director, Office of Education Technology at the US Department of Education says, “I am greatly encouraged by the collaboration and opportunity presented by our work with JISC on the Learning Registry.”
This builds on JISC’s work in discovery, activity data, Jorum and open educational resources supporting the discovery, use and analytics of digital resources for teaching, learning and research. The experiment will give, JISC a much clearer view of the potential of this approach, and there will be a rich dataset of content available to future services.
Read more on the Learning Registry.
Find out about the JISC, Mimas and JISC CETIS project the Learning Registry Node Experiment.
#learningreg
via Jisc news
During JISC's transition period to move the organisation towards a new legal entity, a Shadow Board has been formed to help manage the process.
Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice Chancellor, University of Edinburgh; Chair of JISC and Chair of the Shadow Board says: "We are very pleased to be able to announce the appointment of JISC's Shadow Board and welcome their insight and expertise in taking a reshaped JISC into the future.
Meet the members of JISC’s Shadow Board through their short video introductions and hear why they are looking forward to working with JISC during the next one to two years.
Heather Macdonald, Chief Executive and Principal of Sheffield College, is also a member of the JISC shadow board, video to follow.
Read more about JISC’s transition
via Jisc news
As bonfire night approaches, you can find resources on the Guardian Teacher Network for teaching pupils about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot – and their impact on democracy and parliament
"Remember, remember the fifth of November – gunpowder, treason and plot."
The rhyme may be quite familiar to many children – but do they know the significance of the story behind it and the impact it had on democracy and parliament in the UK?
With the UK's first ever Parliament Week launched yesterday (and with bonfire night fast approaching), now is the perfect time to bring parliament and democracy to life.
A great place to start is the Introduction to Parliament. This interactive guide, ideal for use on whiteboards, allows students to zoom into the House of Commons and House of Lords, take a quiz on the role of the monarchy, and explore how the UK is governed.
Alternatively, pupils can try their hand at being an MP for a week. This multi-level, online game aims to help 11- to 14-year-olds develop their political awareness, with the opportunity to plan speeches, vote on laws and watch videos of MPs in action.
Younger pupils can explore how laws are made with the illustrated booklet Parliament, Laws and You. Following the imaginary story of Froggypop, students investigate what happens when the government tries to ban a popular fizzy drink, examining the role of MPs, Lords and the Queen along the way.
A useful resource aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds is Politics for Beginners . This document introduces the ideas of capitalism and socialism, and highlights some hot political issues including immigration, tax and public spending.
For a more historical look at the changing role of the UK parliament, you can explore the Execution of King Charles I. This KS3 resource encourages pupils to analyse and evaluate a variety of sources, including an engraving and an eyewitness account of the death of Charles I in 1649. It also examines the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell.
As Parliament Week includes 5 November, you might want to draw pupils' attention to the Gunpowder Plot. This lesson plan for KS2 contains useful links to worksheets and games about the failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. There's also an assembly about Guy Fawkes and an article that is perfect for KS3.For a comprehensive look at the birth and development of the Westminster Parliament over the last 1,000 years, check out the Houses of History resource. This interactive timeline allows students to track the shift in power from the monarchy to the people through a range of animations, articles, images and quotations. There is also a KS3 parliamentary scrapbook for students to use plus a look at the "Tower of Power" in this magazine-style resource for KS4 pupils.
The Guardian Teacher Network also contains further details about UK Parliament Week, which is focusing on "Stories of Democracy". You can also access a selection of activities about campaigns and debates for use at KS3.
With tuition fees set to rise, more and more students are attending university open days to see what they will be getting for their money
Choosing a university has taken the Gordon family on a nationwide tour of campuses. Today, they are at Worcester, they've already visited Derby and still plan to see Cumbria. In the course of a week they will have visited five in all, totting up 1,000 miles and staying overnight with friends, family and in youth hostels.
"We're going to all the universities I'm interested in applying to," says 17-year-old Anna, from Ipswich in Suffolk, who plans to do a degree in outdoor adventure leadership and management.
"I'm keeping an open mind until I've seen them all."
Ben, her father, jokes that their week away has been a nice family break. But there is a more serious side to it. "We want to make the decision process easier for Anna, as university will be a different prospect for her than for her older sisters because of the rise in tuition fees next year," he says.
"We're interested in seeing the range of subjects she'll be studying, how much work will be involved – as formal tuition time seems to vary by university – and what the employability rates are. There are value-for-money issues to consider."
The Gordons are typical of the new trend to emerge in this year's application process, fuelled by next year's rise in tuition fees to up to £9,000. Universities across the UK are reporting a huge increase in the number of prospective students attending open days – up by more than 75% in some places – and, in particular, in parents accompanying their children.
Applicants are no longer just interested in choosing the most suitable course, but in meeting staff, looking at accommodation, discovering more about the location and the nature of university life.
Their parents have questions about funding – the availability of bursaries and scholarships for those on lower incomes, what "extras" the fees will include and the university's record on graduate employment. In other words, they want to know, as never before, what they will be getting for their money.
For Oli Dowling, 17, from Cambridge, visiting his five choices with his parents has already paid off.
Having met the history lecturers at one institution, he has decided to strike it from his list. "They just weren't inspiring at all and that put me off," he says. "If I'm going to devote three years to study and have to pay the fees, then I want to enjoy the course and get the best out of it."
Increases in attendance for open days at Worcester have ranged from 12% on some days to 76% on others, and the university has added extra events to meet demand. It is a pattern that is being repeated around the country. If the early indications are that applications to universities are significantly down for 2012 entry, then this is not being reflected in open day visitors.
Newcastle University, for example, has recorded one of the biggest rises, up by 24% on last year and reaching a record 18,000 visitors. At Bristol, the rise was 18%, up from 11,000 in 2010 to more than 13,000.
David Alder, the university's director of communications and marketing, says: "The visits allow prospective students to put into context all the information they have already researched about a university. They want to know that the whole experience will be right for them, from the course itself to the town or city they will be based in. Parents are increasingly a part of the process because they want to be sure their children are making the right decision."
Some of the biggest rises have been at open days held in the summer, suggesting that students are starting the selection process earlier. Leicester University saw a 13% rise in numbers from the previous year, with more than 4,500 visitors during one weekend in June.
Jonathan Tinnacher, its head of student recruitment, says: "Students are becoming much savvier about what they want and expect for their money, and are far more robust than ever before in their decision-making.
"They are asking increasingly about finance and this is a complex picture because every university will have its own criteria for administering scholarships and bursaries."
Sheffield University has seen visitor numbers up by almost 30%, while Nottingham plans to review the number of events it holds next year in the light of an overall 17% rise in attendance this year. Stewart Aitken, the director of marketing, says: "Students are looking more rigorously at the institutions and it is important the universities support them in that by making all the information available.
"They are looking not just at value for money, but also at the currency their degree will have on graduation. They want to know that they will be taught by lecturers with a solid background in research. The increased focus on employability is a growing trend, and not a surprising one in the current economic climate."
At Winchester University, one of the smallest in the country with about 6,500 students, Professor Elizabeth Stuart, the senior pro-vice chancellor, prepared answers to anticipated questions about tuition fees that were never asked by sixth-formers attending open days.
"Students seem to be resigned to the tuition fees rise – it is the parents who are worried. We were ready with responses to those who might be considering not applying, but we didn't encounter the question," she says. Just how much of an impact fees are having will be apparent after the deadline for university applications in mid-January. "Debating this now is meaningless when people are leaving it later and later to apply this year," she says.
At Worcester, surprisingly few of the students were concerned about the rise in tuition fees.
Matthew Ketch, 17, from Polesworth in Warwickshire, says: "It's going to happen so why worry about it? I want to get a degree and I won't let that stand in the way." Meanwhile, Bethan Watson, also 17, who travelled with her mother from Kington in Powys, adds: "I'll only have to pay them off when I get a good enough job, so I'm not going to worry about it. It's going to be the same for everyone starting next year."
It remains a big concern for the thousands of parents following their teenagers around campuses, however. Today, for the first time in his eight years as Worcester's vice-chancellor, Professor David Green was asked in an open session by the mother of a prospective English student whether her daughter's core texts would be included in the fees.
"To be asked such a specific question just shows the extent to which funding is a concern and the extent to which there is an expectation of value for money," he says. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the rising numbers of teenagers and parents attending open days is due to tuition fees.
"We haven't just seen parents, but whole families, including aunties, cousins and toddlers in push-chairs, accompanying sixth-formers. Going to university is becoming a decision that the whole family makes and everyone is rallying around emotionally, intellectually and financially."
Green believes that what he calls the "waverers" – the students who are undecided about whether to go to university at all – can't be persuaded, as they are simply not turning up to open days.
"They seem to have made that decision privately already, and sadly we are not meeting them to be able to have that conversation."
• A change has been made to the first paragraph of this story to make clear that Derby's open day had already taken place. The university has another open day later this month.
We must defend the principle of widening participation, says Peter Scott, against those who favour elitism
Half a century ago Kingsley Amis, aided and abetted by the Times, moaned that "more means worse". A decade later, the notorious Black Papers were published, peddling the same reactionary views. But then the right abandoned its campaign against the expansion of higher education.
Now the beast is back. The tripling of tuition fees has reduced demand for undergraduate degrees. While liberals hope this is a temporary blip, conservative opponents anticipate a permanent shrinking of a bloated mass system. Then there is the Treasury. With deficit reduction a non-negotiable priority, any decline in the number of students means a welcome similar decline in the up-front state loans they are entitled to.
Already, the prospects look bleak. Last week, Ucas reported an 8% decline in applications for undergraduate courses next year and, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, public expenditure on education, including universities, is being cut back at a rate not seen since the 1950s.
But there is more – a steady trickle of articles trashing the value of higher education (not, of course, for "top people", but for the people at large) and talking up alternatives to university (whether apprenticeships or cheap substitutes provided by private colleges). The aim is obvious – to soften up and, if possible, to reverse support for an open and public system of higher education.
Fees were introduced by the previous government to enable higher education to access more public funding by the back-door. Existing public investment was, broadly speaking, maintained – until the banking crisis hit.
Now, the combination of much higher fees and steep cuts in government funding has produced a counter-revolutionary moment, as elitist ideologies have re-emerged from the undergrowth.
But let's be fair. This is not a case of (progressive) Labour versus (reactionary) Tories. There are powerful voices in the Labour party who argue for a re-division of higher education into "real" universities and new-style "technical colleges".
As with the enthusiasm for apprenticeships, usually unspecified, the common ground is the old idea that we need more plumbers and fewer sociologists. Maybe. However, advocates of recreating a clean distinction between academic higher education and advanced vocational training are behind the times. Pharmacy courses are stuffed full of academic study of chemistry, and humanities degrees obsess about employability, to give just two examples.
The universities minister, David Willetts, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, deny that a reduction in student numbers is their aim. They argue that provided students have access to the right "key information sets" (the information that universities will be obliged to make easily accessible to the public) and that barriers to new providers of higher education are lowered, the system will find its own level. Students will be able to make informed choices about whether or not to go into higher education in the first place – and, if so, choose the type of higher education that suits them best.
The catch, of course, is that more students are expected (and may be required?) to opt for higher education-lite (steered away from "proper" HE into studying at FE colleges, private colleges etc) – which takes us right back into the Black Papers territory of 40 years ago. The political naivety, and brutal insensitivity, of the Black Papers has gone. But the message is essentially the same. The expansion of higher education has been a mistake. It has diluted "proper" university education while doing nothing for the life chances of students from less-well-off backgrounds.
Widening participation in higher eduction is off the agenda. It has been replaced by "fair access", a much narrower ambition. The responsibility for addressing deeply entrenched social inequities has been passed from the government, which can do a lot, to institutions, which can do much less.
But this counter-revolutionary moment will pass. First, it is too late to turn the clock back. Higher education for the masses has proved itself, even if some people still dislike it. Excellence and access are recognised as mutually dependent.
Next, even the offspring of the Black Paper pamphleteers concede that there is no alternative to maintaining higher levels of participation in higher education. All competitor nations are investing hard in tertiary education. The only argument that still has some traction is over the nature of the higher education to which the masses have access.
Britain has become a graduate society. Long-term, there are fewer and fewer jobs for non-graduates, whatever may happen to graduate job prospects in the short term. But it is about more than jobs. It is becoming increasingly difficult for non-graduates, especially among the younger generation, to access the full range of social and cultural opportunities available in modern Britain. They risk being, in some intangible but powerful way, disenfranchised.
We must defend higher education in its current form. A lot is at stake – not just our future wealth, in the shape of a successful economy, but our common wealth, in the form of our democracy.
• Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education