Andrew Gunn 🇺🇦

Why does UK #HigherEd have a Teaching Excellence Framework? My new book ‘Teaching Excellence? Universities in an Age of Student Consumerism’ tells the #TEF story amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Excel… blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produ… @SAGEPublishers @EducationUoM

It’s funny, when you consider that Brexiteers used to complain that the EU was too bureaucratic, to learn that the UK civil service has ballooned since 2016 from 385,000 to 516,000. That increase of 130,000 compares with an entire EU staff of just 60,000! open.substack.com/pub/nixons/p/t…

Why academics in Hong Kong are obsessed with metrics timeshighereducation.com/opinion/metric…

The tension between nationalism and internationalism in Hong Kong tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

A very nice comment about our podcast. As a general reflection, I think there is a hunger out there for 'straightforward political history' and more 'traditional' methods of exploring topics. Personally, I think pressure for 'teaching innovation' often leads to dull gimmickry.

2026 study analyzing 600K social science abstracts finds leftward shift: 🔹90% of politically relevant social science research leaned left 1960-2024 🔹All disciplines showed leftward movement between 1990 & 2024 🔹Disciplines w/greater leftward orientation displayed greater ideological homogeneity

Striking finding in new @iealondon paper - only 57% of Green voters list Net Zero by 2050 as an important national goal - and not particularly bothered about protecting green spaces, either. Maybe they should rebrand as the Reds?

Nothing changes ….

🚀 What does it take to build capable public institutions today? Join us at the fourth annual UCL IIPP FORUM 2026, 16–17 June in London. 🔗 Learn more and register here buff.ly/fZlA7M2

The British Government is a complicated beast. Dozens of departments, hundreds of public bodies, more corporations than one can count... Such is its complexity that there isn't an org chart for it. Well, there wasn't... Introducing ⚙️Machinery of Government⚙️

Education research the least likely to replicate according to a huge new paper published by Nature

Never were truer words said @WilliamJHague

Today is the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, one of the most important books ever. If you don’t have the stamina to read it all, we made a film about him a few years ago. My favourite part is when his metaphor of “the man of system” comes alive.

This student does not understand the economics/signaling value of higher education. (A committee of Harvard faculty has proposed capping the percentage of A's per class at 20%.)

Good architecture is a posterchild public good: non-rival and non-excludable. Had great fun using the economics toolbox to study why developments look rather underwhelming and simulate what policies could lead to more beautiful cities. Plus, so cool to work with my amazing former and current @LSEGeography PhDstudents... github.com/Ahlfeldt/DPs/b…

You can see the soul drain from society in real time.

Quite literally, our political parties are aging and dying (research by Tim Bale et al ⁦@QMUL⁩)

Counter to the prevailing view, soft skills more than quantitative competency have seen the biggest rewards in the labour market over recent years, writes John Burn-Murdoch. ft.trib.al/Kf3UYah

Here for example is @benwansell's map of voting intention by occupation. Big left-wing clump (Lab and Lib indistinguishable!). Big culturally right-wing grouping, with Tories less right on culture, more on econ and Reform vice versa. Big gap between. benansell.substack.com/p/british-poli…

This new paper shows how journal special issues can operate as a closed academic social network of cronies. Sad but true. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Professor Arif Ahmed, the Office for Students’ Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom, speaking at our annual Navigating Academic Freedom conference, is drawing on philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s distinction between civil and enterprise associations. He argues that universities have drifted from the civil model — a community bound by rules that protect independent inquiry — toward an enterprise model that enforces shared moral missions like EDI. Defending academic freedom means returning to the civil model.