A question that crosses quite a few minds from time to time, given that academic jobs are (1) fewer than the people qualified to do them and (2) haunted by bureaucracy and political interference: what are the prospects for living a life of philosophical dialogue and enquiring research without institutional affiliation? In early 2010 Justine Johnstone …

Delegates passed a motion calling for the abolition of ‘zero-hours contracts’ in which academics are employed on an ad hoc basis with no guarantee of teaching within a year. The use of unpaid postgraduates to carry out seminars was also condemned.
Times Higher Education Supplement

From 2003 (the year I entered the University of Durham as an undergrad. fresher):

Where do I get news about the plight of postgrad. philosophy teaching assistants at Birkbeck? Private Eye, naturally...

Surprise mass e-mails from the Vice Chancellor seldom augur well...

Are pre-doctoral research posts normal in Spanish academia?

Among the irritating things in life is correcting a typo. or similar in a Ph.D. thesis after submitting the final version, because neither you nor the examiners had spotted it;Actually, it’s worse: I spotted one even before the viva, and fixed it... but failed to notice my PDF reader saving the revised file to the wrong …

I shall be doing some part-time Philosophy teaching again this academic year, and the start of term at Durham is fast approaching. What news comes from elsewhere in the sector to fill us with optimistic keenness and pedagogical vigour? This news:

This is the version of the thesis which will be used in the Viva: two copies for the examiners, and one for me.

New College of the Humanities (NCH) will offer the ‘highest-quality’ education to ‘gifted’ undergraduates, its creators say... The college will prepare undergraduates for degrees in law, economics, history, philosophy and English literature. Students will also take three ‘intellectual skills’ modules in science literacy, logic and critical thinking and applied ethics.
B.B.C. News

Is the high level of risk-aversion we keep seeing related to candidates’ anticipated future prospects? (‘Pedestrian’ is the word one of the senior staff has been kicking around for the past couple of years; ‘workmanlike’ tends to be mine. It’s not outright flawed work, but it’s targetting adequacy when many candidates could be showing more evidence …

Keele may have got a reprieve, but with impeccable timing, managers at Greenwich have decided to debase themselves in turn:

Keele this time, and applied ethics especially:

Anticipatory student graffiti in Durham...apparently looks like this:

I seem to keep reading that an increase in tuition fees, whatever its faults, will at any rate create such a force of implacable demand for efficacious teaching that universities will be obliged to push their pedagogical standards strongly upwards. It will be illuminating to see whether this comes to pass.