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Pauline von Hellermann
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green  ·  activity timestamp 10 hours ago

#AcademicVenting 🧵One thing i am learning (having been at a small, struggling university before): things are not good even within the “winners”. Huge student numbers, staff completely overworked, academic freedom for multiple reasons palpably curtailed, managerial centralisation of support staff wreaking havoc (“we must separate the person from the post” - why must we?) . Morale seems pretty low, even here. Amongst academic and support staff (and students), there are no “winners” at all.

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Pauline von Hellermann
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green replied  ·  activity timestamp 9 hours ago

#AcademicVenting 🧵Then, of course, the world-wide, very serious political onslaught on universities, already manifesting in many ways. Harvard announced last week that they were cutting their PhD programmes by 50-75% across all disciplines! This is so bad.

I dread to think what will happen to UK HE if/when Reform get in.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/
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Pauline von Hellermann
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green replied  ·  activity timestamp 9 hours ago

#AcademicVenting 🧵and then also the move to online teaching and the reuse of recorded lectures makes us lecturers rapidly redundant. Last nighr a friend told me about how she had to spend hours preparing a new online MSc - all in 6min snippets that had to comply with v strict guidelines (zero ac freedom, critical thinking); this would then be available for 5 years, no further input required from her. And then this morning I read this post by @petergleick

https://fediscience.org/@petergleick/115444098505231725

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