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Wellington was once a town where espresso was dangerously pretentious, but an innovative alliance of galleries, libraries, archives and museums has helped rebrand the New Zealand city

The economic slowdown calls for strong leadership and new ways of working across boundaries, says Ewart Wooldridge

The tyranny of 'the hypothesis' has made science too timid, says Tim Birkhead

Press-ganged into attending the annual graduation ceremony, a sweaty and begowned Gloria Monday wishes some of the cash on show was heading her way

The fuss over external examining and standards misses the point - degrees really are no longer what they were, says Kevin Sharpe

At a seminar in Romania, Jon Baldwin finds that this new member of the EU has valuable lessons for UK universities

The work of advising select committees is demanding and rigorous, and it deserves reward in the REF, argues Steven Barnett

Students¡¯ pleasure in writing is often knocked out of them by formal schooling. Blogging may become their only outlet of expression and, with a little encouragement, it is possible to reignite their love for the written word, suggests Tara Brabazon

Universities' admissions of their failings have been met with calls for stringent supervision, surely the wrong approach entirely

Marking schemes are an admission of failure, says Felipe Fern¨¢ndez-Armesto

The wasteful technician-academic divide needs to end, says Sally Feldman

David Baker argues that forward-thinking higher education providers see opportunities, not unremitting gloom, ahead

Roger Brown and Geoffrey Alderman ask if the QAA and the external examining system must change to continue to ensure quality

Managers should open new paths to the title 'professor' as research funds shrink and academics' duties expand, argues Huw Morris

The titles of the Open Media Series help lift Tara Brabazon above the daily grind and remind her of the need to question conventional wisdom and fight injustice

The SNP wants applied research to drive the Scottish economy. Can universities deliver without more money or a loss of quality?

Gloria Monday is surprised to find marks being awarded for expletives, and wonders whether she should incorporate this practice into her work as an external examiner

Undergraduates who see creative writing as an 'easy' degree dismay a tutor accustomed to the dedication of adult education students

Nancy Rothwell, Raymond Dwek, Alan Malcolm and Richard Dyer on the future of UK biology's learned societies

Stress and harassment cost the sector millions of pounds in lost work days and feed a culture of human misery, says Sally Hunt

Middle management occupies an uneasy but vital position between collegial scholars and master-planning senior officials

Kevin Fong discovers fear in a campus mini-mart shelf full of Pot Noodles

E-learning consultants invent crises and create divisions between students and teachers so they can sell their wares. Tara Brabazon analyses the rise of the digital Raj

Despite some progress, this year's Green League reveals that universities are still failing to deliver a lead on sustainability

A degree is no mark of genius, and we shouldn't expect it to be, says Alan Ryan

Carping about universities often overlooks the positive and the constant efforts we make to improve, says Rick Trainor

Putting staff on insecure fixed-term contracts is a false economy that harms research, says Sean Wallis. Let's recycle their expertise instead

Diplomas offer the skills and knowledge a competitive economy needs, so the CBI's predilection for A levels is puzzling, says Michael Arthur

Yet another meeting, yet another report that fails to break new ground. Gloria Monday fights boredom by totting up the number of legs in the room

Tara Brabazon on the soundtrack to life on a continent¡¯s edge

Increasingly bitter and complex campus disputes need sane, tactful ombudsmen to solve them, says G.R. Evans

Strategies to deal with global warming must embrace all disciplines and approaches, not merely the technological, says Mike Hulme

Clumsy questions and dodgy data bedevil claims that high IQ leads to atheism, says Denis Alexander. A closer look offers a different picture

The spirit of revolution seems absent in today's students, but that's not to say that they're wholly apathetic and lazy

Felipe Fern¨¢ndez-Armesto considers why soccer will never score highly in the US

A UK institute of advanced studies would enrich interdisciplinarity and raise the profile of key scholarly work, writes Kevin Sharpe

Western approaches to learning can be alien to students from other cultures, who learn to a different 'script'. Thushari Welikala explains

Tara Brabazon on the cutting-edge centres that generated a new way of doing research

The v-c¡¯s glorious IT dreams always fail in reality, laments Gloria Monday as she reaches for her pen and paper

We can't allow rivalries to derail the effort to make research sustainable by getting funders to pay full economic costs

Spoon-fed students won't fend for themselves at university, says Tim Birkhead

Roger Brown asks whether the Higher Education Academy is the right body to monitor higher education in the UK

Paul Ramsden on the Higher Education Academy initiatives adding value to teaching practices and student learning

Shallow, costly, widely manipulated and methodologically worthless: ex-HEA director Lee Harvey on a 'laughable' National Student Survey

Following the demise of the Net Book Agreement, bookshop shelves are full of TV tie-ins and empty of scholarly work, says Martin Cohen

Universities know academies have their risks, but they join out of a sense of justice and mission. Just don't expect wonders

Gauging the 'public value' of arts graduates is a tricky job, says Sally Feldman

Many now-defunct public clocks once helped shape shared spaces. Tara Brabazon is delighted that a (digital) website is working to restore function and value to a neglected (analogue) public feature

Disseminating research via the web is appealing, but it lacks journals' peer-review quality filter, says Philip Altbach

Three academics at the University of Nottingham argue that the recent arrests of a postgraduate student and a staff member herald an erosion of civil liberties and a clear threat to legitimate research

Gloria Monday examines the importance of clear communication

The web's instant access to good, bad and unfiltered data means we need libraries, and librarians' expertise, now more than ever

Once an advocate of core subject teaching, Susan Bassnett now finds herself endorsing the broad diversity afforded by modern curriculums

As Kevin Fong scribbles on napkins, he wonders how Geri penned a whole book

School libraries are suffering, and even closing, as resources are cut, staff ¡®redeployed¡¯ and the internet deemed more important to learning than printed matter and professionals who can sort the wheat from the chaff. Tara Brabazon says we must fight to defend the invaluable contribution libraries make to information literacy and to an informed citizenry

MPs have voted for common sense and common cause in passing the Human Fertilisation Bill intact, says Mary Warnock

The flaw of rankings is that all universities have good points, says Alan Ryan

With the REF research assessment has come of age but much still needs to be done, says David Eastwood