University staff : 1.4% pay rise
Vice Chancellor: 5.6% pay rise
This is University of Staffordshire -- but pattern is widespread across UK universities
Executive pay up
Staff pay down (in real terms)
Goodwill & trust gone
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Labour is not the alternative to Reform, it's the gateway to it.
Higher Ed retaliation is real.
The fact that so many survivors stay silent isn’t proof that it doesn’t happen—it’s proof of how well universities suppress it.
🪜 🎓 📜 🍎 ♀️ 👩🏾🔬 👩🏼🔬 👩🏾🎓 #PhDSky #Blackademia #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #MeToo #HigherEd #PhDChat #TimesUpHigherEd
In the next days, we'll see Labour, Reform and the whole lot trying to decide whether the Greens are sectarian Islamists undermining Britain or reckless hippies who are attempting to force-feed the PM's son crack cocaine.
A grid showing how different IT roles (Developers, Designers, Project Managers, QA, and Sysadmins) perceive each other. The matrix format uses humorous images for each intersection - like developers seeing designers as children with crayons, QA seeing everyone as problematic, and sysadmins being viewed as either chaotic or mysterious by others. The images range from professional photos to memes, creating a satirical take on tech workplace stereotypes and interdepartmental relationships
Think there might be some truth in this matrix...
(creator: unknown)
Photograph from 1911 taken by Herbert Ponting whilst with Scott's Antarctic Expedition The monochrome photo is taken from within a cave. The walls of the cave are made of ice. The cave entrance is in the mid distance with two figures standing looking out towards a distant ship. Between them and the ship there is first a 'beach' of ice before the sea itself. The ship could be up to 800 metres away What makes the photo so special is that where the figures are at the cave entrance there is a band of very white snow and ice (contrasting with the comparatively dark inside of the cave) that creates a stark framework in which the men and the ship are captured. It is made even more dramatic by the fact that the cave entrance is at least 30 metres high and is in the shape of a distorted elipse with the tail sloping off to the right at the top of the elipse The photo being in monochrome in a largely white environment makes the photographers skill all the more laudable
This photo was taken in 1911 using glass plate technology by Herbert Ponting who was part of Scott's Antarctic expedition,
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
Loving this. "Antirender" engine converts architects presentation drawings into the likely reality of the designs :)
antirender.com
Harvard just opened an investigation into Larry Summers's ties to Epstein.
That's just PR cover for Harvard.
They've known this entire time.
Epstein literally had an office at Harvard for years.
Last Sunday. #WeAreTheUniversity #UCU #UK #HigherEducation #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky
👏 "There are over four million kids in child poverty in the UK and there are four and a half million people who can't get a dentist appointment."
"We spend 90% of the political capital and discourse and media focus discussing 37,000 people."
Happy Republic Day of Turkey ! Without the foundation of the Republic, there would not be academics from Turkey who made significant contributions to the world literature. #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #HigherEducation
Just in case anyone is listening, please note that UK universities cannot operate successfully on the basis of continuous reduction of academic staff and academic staff pay. No amount of staff wellness sessions will change this.
Diversity doesn’t lower quality. Gatekeeping does.
When the same voices dominate academia, we don’t get excellence—we get elitism.
🪜 🎓 📜 🍎 ♀️ 👩🏾🔬 👩🏼🔬 👩🏾🎓 #PhDSky #Blackademia #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #MeToo #HigherEd #PhDChat #TimesUpHigherEd
Imagine doing it in a foreign language, in a different country away from where you were born and grew up with limited funding, difficult bureaucracy e.g. visa and in isolation. #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter #UK #HigherEducation.
The impact of PhD studies on mental health - A longitudinal population study
PhDs can be and some would likely argue, should be hard.
But surely not *this* hard?
#AcademicSky
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Wow...
ALT TEXT: A headline on The Courier website, reading "Tayport bus users threaten protest over Stagecoach plan to cut routes Tayport travellers were "incredibly angry" at a packed public meeting to discuss bus service changes to and from the town." Beneath is a photograph of around 40 people, seated in a public meeting.
ALT TEXT: A headline on The Courier website. The headline reads "Xplore Dundee posts record profit as ticket prices rise and wages increase The bus firm posted increased revenue and profit in the wake of ticket price increases." Beneath is a photograph of the male CEO of Xplore Dundee, smiling, standing in front of a large green bus.
How can some bus companies thrive while other are making cuts?
Bringing bus companies into public ownership would mean your ticket fare would go back into the service, instead of lining private pockets. People, over profit.
It works in Edinburgh, and it could work in Dundee.
Kirk’s ‘memorial’ getting a live coverage on The Guardian is a great example of how the right gets automatically framed as the default political movement to be ‘understood’ while the victims of that same movement never will never get the same amount of coverage
Text on background: No one does their best work when they are bitterly aware of being structurally devalued.
#AcademicSky #AcademicChatter #UK #HigherEducation
Speak up and you risk retaliation
University culture has decayed so far that retaliation is default
HR opens “investigations” with no evidence
Whistleblowers are sidelined, "troublemakers" victimised or dismissed
It's a system that punishes truth
Change is overdue -- & coming
We know academia runs on insular, tightly knit circles. That makes speaking out harder & retaliation more common. Survivors are silenced, pushed out, or followed from one institution to the next.
#Turkey 94 #Greece 68 at EuroBasket semifinal. Seriously? What? Wow... Never been more proud of the national basketball team. What an amazing achievement! #Eurobasket2025
The famous tagline from the film, Alien: "In space, no one can hear you scream." In UK academia, it is the same. #UK #HigherEducation #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter
How to tell lies about 'illegal migrants', a 12 year-old girl and Dundee: all amplified by the British right-wing media and Elon Musk. #PrivateEye
Never change, Scotland
academia is a v. strange mix of “we expect you to behave like an employee” (forms, webinars, insanely bad admin software, etc) but also “go fund your entire research operation yourself including paper towels for the sink in the lunchroom we don’t have the budget for that”. #academicsky
I was asked by the editor of The Geographer, the @royalscotgeosoc.bsky.social magazine, to comment on the discussion around imposing domestic student fees in Scotland.
This is an online accessible version of my piece.
ddubdrahcir.wordpress.com/2025/09/03/f...
#academicsky #studentfees #highered
But Americans still believe that they have lived in a "democratic" country when in reality their country is run by the corporate oligarchic plutocracy in a corrupt political and justice systems that mainly exist to punish the poor and allow the rich to do whatever they want... That's despotism...!
