Bad Professor

@ucu err. they didn't though did they? the universities themselves took that decision.

'Public health directors in Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool have already moved teaching online at universities in response to rising cases of Covid.

UCU general secretary @DrJoGrady said: 'The health and safety of the country is being put at risk because of this government's insistence that universities must continue with in-person teaching. ucu.org.uk/article/11094/…

The @IoCoding team at Northumbria University has teamed up with @QAConsultingUK to run a free online coding workshop this Saturday that you can attend from home. Find out more below and book your place here: eventbrite.co.uk/e/teach-the-na…. orlo.uk/fFict

I'm sure Newcastle University who - amongst other things - are a recognised NCSC Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research are grateful for this advice.

@diervilla @jim_dickinson @levipay Whether that makes its fairer is a different question again!

@diervilla @jim_dickinson @levipay Totally agree, Pam. Comparatively speaking at least, these 'algorithms' are far from complex and should be easily explainable. The influence of the 'human' (e.g. through debate in exam boards) has been systematically removed over the years so it's much more transparent.

I'll tell you this. Finding out a university's degree algorithm through public web search is really hard. This would be a really good year to fix that, folks...

@jim_dickinson @levipay Can the 'algorithms' be made easier to understand - probably. Should they be the public domain - yes. But those are different issues.

@jim_dickinson @levipay There is no lack of transparency at an institution, Jim. The information is available to all students - not just your ones you are labelling as a 'certain type'.

@levipay @jim_dickinson If your point is that they should be in the public domain (rather than being restricted to staff and students on an institution's private portal) then I agree - but that's not what the UKSCQA report is recommending?

@levipay @jim_dickinson I rest my case:

Have you had some kind of epiphany, Phil? Is this the right moment to permanently ditch "league tables", in your view?

@martinconder @Chelseachemist1 @Brekkietweets @scattj @lewis_goodall Of course they didn't. They imposed it to prevent elite universities hoovering up students 'cos their finance directors are worried about losses in 2020-21. Individual heads of departments have no idea how they are meant to cope with increased students under covid restrictions.

@Chelseachemist1 @Brekkietweets @scattj @lewis_goodall How hard can it be for universities to increase capacity? Government had to impose caps specifically because it was so easy!

Make no mistake, this transfers the chaos from Ofqual (who had to come up with a new appeals process and deal with 100000s of cases) and schools (who had to navigate the process) and politicians (who had to deal with political fall out) to universities, which are in pandemonium.

@SchoolDuggery Seriously though - you need to better understand please the effort that goes into planning, resourcing and executing those two days. And University staff are currently exhausted.

@SchoolDuggery Stuff that - I had to get up at 6am to answer the phones last week - I'm not doing that twice.

The fact that the statement was not accompanied by anything about what happens to university places now or what students should do is not even shocking. Just routinely terrible.

@HorshamGardener @wolborough @DavidLammy @GavinWilliamson Err. No we aren't. You've made this up, Geoff, haven't you?

@wolborough @DavidLammy @GavinWilliamson We will have a cohort of students going to university without having completed their education for which they have git a grade for. Universities are extremely concerned they wont be able to hack the course in many cases

This is so unbelievably cruel. Why should where you live and the school you go to determine your grade ? The casual snobbery and elitism towards pupils and there teachers makes me so angry. Why is the government so relaxed about damaging their futures? Fix it @GavinWilliamson

This is just an advert for needless legal services. Universities have taken their H&S responsibilities seriously for decades and are already massively risk averse - are you actually suggesting they might be taking the current situation 'lightly'? 😱

Grade inflation => league table rises. Of course this is nothing to do with @timeshighered is it?

"Professors of Social Work are often quite open about their Marxist allegiances". Discuss. There is a lot of badly-informed bollocks being written about Universities right now. But this article (which isn't even about COVID-19) wins the whole competition thearticle.com/why-not-set-un….