#higher-education — Public Fediverse posts

Mail on Sunday ends up funding state school scholarship via payout to MP
By Richard Adams Education editor

Labour’s Catherine Atkinson says she will give students £5,000 paid to her by paper that falsely accused her of concealing private school education

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/11/mail-on-sunday-funds-state-school-scholarship-via-payout-to-mp

#UniversityofDerby #Derby #Students #MailonSunday #DailyMailGeneralTrust #Schools #Law #Socialmobility #Highereducation #Education #UKnews #Media #Nationalnewspapers #Mediabusiness #Newspapers #Newspapersmagazines #TheGuardian #RichardAdamsEducationeditor

Mail on Sunday ends up funding state school scholarship via payout to MP https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/11/mail-on-sunday-funds-state-school-scholarship-via-payout-to-mp #UniversityOfDerby #Derby #Students #MailOnSunday #DailyMailGeneralTrust #Schools #Law #SocialMobility #HigherEducation #Education #UkNews #Media #NationalNewspapers #MediaBusiness #Newspapers #NewspapersMagazines

How Ron DeSantis politicized Florida’s higher education by placing his loyalists at the top
By Richard Luscombe in Miami

Term-limited, hard-right governor instituted an ideological infiltration of universities by placing allies in powerful posts

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/11/ron-desantis-florida-higher-education-takeover

#Florida #RonDeSantis #Highereducation #Education #USnews #USuniversities #TheGuardian #RichardLuscombeinMiami

How Ron DeSantis politicized Florida’s higher education by placing his loyalists at the top https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/11/ron-desantis-florida-higher-education-takeover #Florida #RonDesantis #HigherEducation #Education #UsNews #UsUniversities

The risks of integrating AI too rapidly into higher education

I thought this was an interesting announcement from Surrey. I certainly see the appeal of being able to publicly say you’re doing this:

Rather than introducing AI as an additional skill, Surrey is undertaking a systematic redesign of every degree programme. This transformation will ensure that, as AI becomes embedded across society and the economy, Surrey students retain deep disciplinary expertise, develop critical judgement, and understand the implications of deploying AI within their field. In a course on voting behaviour, for instance, students are given a simple brief: pick an election, ask ChatGPT to explain the result, then interrogate whether AI got it right – testing its response against established theories of political behaviour, datasets from the British Election Study and published academic research. Students are enabled to identify and explain where the AI is vague or inaccurate, so that AI is not a shortcut but a prompt for deeper analysis. 

Every student – from foundation year through to postgraduate – will develop applied, discipline-specific AI capability as a core part of their studies. Surrey graduates will be equipped to shape how AI is used, challenged and governed in real-world contexts – ensuring that they remain trusted, capable and competitive in a labour market reshaped by AI.

What does “discipline-specific AI capability” mean though? My concern is that the current commercial landscape is so profoundly uncertain (given token economics etc) that a masterplan about what capacities to equip graduates with is doomed to failure. You either specify ‘capability’ in abstraction from current tools and risk a lack of practical relevance or you specify it in terms of current tools and risk being rendered out of date when those tools go through a rapid shift in terms of access, resourcing and capabilities. It’s not tenable to do nothing. But I think doing too much, all at once, risks being counter productive by locking in approaches and techniques which risk obsolence.

There is a stated commitment that AI “will be used selectively and purposefully, only where it improves educational outcomes, while ensuring that core competencies, from clinical reasoning and legal judgement to engineering design and creative practice, are preserved and strengthened”. I agree! But this is work which needs careful learning design, it needs identification of best practice, it needs willing colleagues. It’s a long-term direction of travel, rather than an outcome. I just don’t see how you do it without having an army of learning designs working 24/7 with academic teams suddenly full of time for development.

Now we’re talking, @[email protected] #anthropology #ContraAI🤖 #highereducation

www.wsj.com/lifestyle/ca...

Want to Succeed in an AI World...

That'll be $100k per credit hour, please.

https://piefed.social/c/mildlyinfuriat[email protected]/p/2371071/that-ll-be-100k-per-credit-hour-please

Moravian University: Moravian University Launches AI Lab to Model Ethical Innovation. “Moravian University announced the official launch of its AI Innovation Lab, a hands-on physical and collaborative space where students from any academic discipline can test ideas, learn emerging technologies, and build practical AI tools to address real-world challenges.”

Critiquing
Archer, E. (2017) ‘The Assessment Purpose Triangle: Balancing the Purposes of Educational Assessment’, Frontiers in Education, 2. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00041.

#AcademicChatter #HigherEducation #Assessment

Indonesian foragers may have sucked on mind-altering nuts 25,000 years ago, research finds
By Ian Sample Science editor

Analysis of two skeletons reveals tooth wear and traces of psychoactive substance in what may be earliest known evidence for human drug taking

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/sep/09/indonesian-foragers-mind-altering-nuts-research-finds

#Science #Palaeontology #Drugs #Indonesia #Worldnews #AsiaPacific #Research #Highereducation #TheGuardian #IanSampleScienceeditor

Indonesian foragers may have sucked on mind-altering nuts 25,000 years ago, research finds https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/sep/09/indonesian-foragers-mind-altering-nuts-research-finds #Science #Palaeontology #Drugs #Indonesia #WorldNews #AsiaPacific #Research #HigherEducation

Bright minds, a scholarship, required visa and universities waiting for them. But also physically trapped in #Gaza because our xenophobic minister of migration (yes. enough people voted for that to become a reality) is painting a picture of the hordes of other (equally bright, ambitious and desperate) people who will no doubt be attracted by what might turn out to be just the right thing to do for people in need.
Feel free to sign the petition...
#education #highereducation #humanrights
https://c.org/GWGyTZPXPP

Our new Springer Nature chapter, “Mental Health and Academic Life in Ukraine During Wartime,” is out today.

Resilience should not mean endless endurance. It should mean creating institutions that help people preserve themselves while continuing education and research.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70134-9_166-1

#MentalHealth #HigherEducation #Ukraine #WartimeAcademia #AcademicMentalHealth

See, that's your problem. RIGHT THERE
#UkPol #Universities #HigherEducation #HE

Students are suffering from US colleges’ shaky finances. Trump policies are making everything worse
By Marina Villeneuve in Lynchburg, Virginia

Many four-year colleges will resort to laying off faculty, cutting services and increasing prices amid financial stress

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/08/us-colleges-financial-trouble-trump-policies

#USeducation #Trumpadministration #Highereducation #Education #USnews #USpolitics #TheGuardian #MarinaVilleneuveinLynchburg #Virginia

I went to Ikea with my son – and was confronted with my parenting failures | Zoe Williams
By Zoe Williams

The pre-university shop is the moment you find out how much domestic wisdom you’ve managed to impart. In my case, none

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/08/i-went-to-ikea-with-my-son-and-was-confronted-with-my-parenting-failures

#Parentsandparenting #Ikea #Students #Family #Lifeandstyle #Highereducation #Education #TheGuardian #ZoeWilliams

Saudi deal offers a revenue boost for Exeter University that will save jobs | Letter
By Guardian Staff

The partnership is not funded by ‘dirty money’, as the Exeter branch of the University and College Union claims, says Prof Anthony King

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/sep/07/saudi-deal-offers-a-revenue-boost-for-exeter-university-that-will-save-jobs

#UniversityofExeter #SaudiArabia #Education #Highereducation #MiddleEastandnorthAfrica #Worldnews #TheGuardian #GuardianStaff

Students: as cycle thefts soar, here’s how to protect your bike
By Donna Ferguson

Thefts spike during freshers’ week so make sure you choose a good lock and check your insurance

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/07/bike-theft-university-stolen-lock-insurance

#Cycling #Studentfinance #Universities #Consumeraffairs #UKnews #Insurance #Students #Cycling #Money #Crime #Highereducation #Lifeandstyle #TheGuardian #DonnaFerguson

Princeton University: Princeton strengthens its support for AI and data science scholarship through Data and Intelligent Systems initiative. “Princeton has established a new academic unit, Data and Intelligent Systems (DaIS), to help accelerate the pace of discovery in artificial intelligence and data science and to support transformative research and teaching across disciplines.”

‘Gigantic spaceship’: University of Bristol’s flagship £500m campus opens https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/07/university-of-bristol-flagship-500m-campus-opens #Bristol #UkNews #Universities #HigherEducation

‘Gigantic spaceship’: University of Bristol’s flagship £500m campus opens
By Steven Morris

Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus near to station will make it easier for students and staff to commute

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/sep/07/university-of-bristol-flagship-500m-campus-opens

#Bristol #UKnews #Universities #Highereducation #TheGuardian #StevenMorris

University of Mary Washington: UMW Launches Virginia’s First Master’s Degree in AI in Business. “The University of Mary Washington has opened enrollment for a new Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Business (MS in AI in Business), an innovative graduate program designed to prepare professionals for a rapidly evolving, AI-driven economy. The graduate degree is the first of its […]

Times Higher Education: Has Academic Twitter found its voice again?. “The migration to Bluesky, LinkedIn and Mastodon, which accelerated with the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024, was assumed by many to be the end of the community known as Academic Twitter. Yet the issues raised by the [Jason] Arday case has reignited debates on the platform in a way not seen for several years.”

Politico: New IRS proposal threatens universities’ tax-exempt status over diversity programs. “The Trump administration unveiled a plan Thursday to cancel the tax-exempt status of universities that it says give preferential treatment to minority students. The proposed regulations released by the IRS are aimed at preventing discrimination on the basis of race and could affect up to 18,000 high […]

New York Times: Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived.. “Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he […]