Monthly Archives: December 2014

Academic Demotion, Demoralisation and Regression

The latest round of reapplications for Grade 10 positions is now under way. Principal Lecturers and Readers, who long ago met the criteria for their posts, are having to meet new ones. If they don’t by 2017 they are demoted. … Continue reading

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Ronnie’s Rank and Yank

Readers of this blog will know all about the goings on in Business and Law, where the new Dean Da doo Ron Ron Tuninga, moon-faced and grey-moustached, is trying to impose Kingston’s own version of rank and yank on the … Continue reading

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Management fundamentalists

This blog recently commented on the reinstatement of Professor Thomas Docherty at Warwick. Now Professor Docherty has attacked the “managerial fundamentalism” speading through universities of which his suspension was a symptom. In an erudite article he points out how academic … Continue reading

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Tales of the riverbank – Christmas edition

God help ye wretched gentlemen He’ll fill you with dismay For Jools’s bad behaviour Will never go away He’s possessed with Satan’s power He’ll lead your lives astray O tidings of misery and hell Dear Wretches (Ho ho ho ho … Continue reading

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Death in Kensington

The suicide of Professor Stefan Grimm , an academic at Imperial College, adds a note of horror to the dark practices that have spread throughout British universities. Professor Grimm’s recent grant applications failed to get funding, it has been reported … Continue reading

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Kingston wins no awards

Readers of Ratty’s last (official) newsletter will know, assuming they got to the end, that Kingston was up for two Times awards, Widening Participation and Entrepreneurial University of the Year. The idea that Kingston should win an award for widening … Continue reading

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