Wonkhe

I left school at 16. I didn’t go to university until I was 41. By then, I knew exactly why I needed higher education. I wanted to build a career in the education sector, and I was pretty sure that trying to do that without a degree would be impossible. But the route back was not easy. I had to make choices, take risks and reorganise my life around a system that was still largely designed for people taking their first degree at 18 or 19.

The UK’s net zero challenge has long been framed as a knowledge problem. It’s one that requires new technologies, deeper insight, and scientific breakthroughs. Universities have risen to that challenge, developing world-leading expertise that contributes directly to decarbonisation.

Teaching-focused academics across the UK are increasingly evaluated on their capacity for “innovation” and “creation”. Yet within many promotion frameworks, these terms remain conceptually unclear, unevenly applied, and difficult to evidence consistently. The result is a growing tension where academics are expected to show continual novelty and “scale” in their teaching practice, while the criteria for what counts as innovation stay ambiguous.

Joanne Patterson is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), Cardiff University and has more than 25 years of experience in the development and delivery of fundamental and applied research projects in the area of sustainability in the built environment with a particular focus on energy.

Being Northern is the greatest privilege of my life. It is to know that where you are born is home to hills that undulate under the weight of their own beauty, beaches which stretch farther than the eye can see (even further than the donkey rides), and where the white heat of industry scolds our hands in knowing the industrial revolution was made possible because of our toil.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a wave of misinformation about neurodiversity — from public figures making sweeping claims to bizarre narratives about everyday medicines like paracetamol supposedly “causing” neurodivergence. That noise bleeds into university life, and as I deliver welcome training to sports clubs, I can’t help but see the need for greater awareness at campus level. I recently came across a statistic that made me pause.

A fee cut – whether across the board or targeted by subject – is the rumour that refuses to die in English higher education finance. Even the disavowal of the Augar report’s £7,500 fee cap recommendation by none less than Philip Augar, and his continued argument that higher education should not be cut to provide more funds for further education, and his continued position that money taken off fee income should return to providers via direct grants, hasn’t stopped the speculation.

Place matters – the Office for Students says so and I agree. This new briefing accompanies the release of a further cut of the geography, environment, and earnings data (GEE) that I wrote about back in June. If you can remember that far back, you might recall that I had three substantive complaints about the initial release: why are we mucking about with ten year old census data? why use LEO and not Graduate Outcomes data? and why use Travel To Work Areas (TTWAs) rather than smaller areas?

University education remains aspirational – a route upwards to securing the right job and the ability to compete for it. Degree courses are expensive, but applicants see it as worth the investment in a life plan (among disadvantaged young people in particular) that is extremely clear. The discussions tend to be around ways to minimise living costs – choosing a university based on rental costs, or living at home during study.

“We know that feeling when there’s a man in the room who, you know, is dangerous in some way.” So I said, apparently, during my interview for Degrees of Abuse, a new investigation from Al Jazeera into sexual violence at UK universities. That quote has made it into headlines and soundbites but I don’t really remember saying it. To be honest, the two hours of that interview passed in a bit of a blur. After it was over, I stumbled out into weak March sunshine and a world that looked exactly the same.