Nostr notes by Andy Buckley

Which is to say, yes: wouldn't have taken off so much for a ...

2026-08-19T21:43:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…mgfw
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Which is to say, yes: wouldn't have taken off so much for a white prof with similar mad story – there's not a lot, but I'm thinking particularly of the British-American physicist carrying a suitcase full of coke that he ~believed he was taking to a Brazilian underwear model, or the Manchester chem-eng prof with the decade-long porn career. Because the racist drive one was one of several crucial factors.

Totally agree it only went viral because of combination of ...

2026-08-19T21:37:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…6dg4
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Totally agree it only went viral because of combination of (charitably, let's say independently) racism and anti-woke campaigners and media, classist press & public obsession with Oxbridge (his first full professorship was at Glasgow), timing... but only took off when it went beyond a technical plagiarism case and became entertainment. Should have been a sector-niche topic for THE, as it was in 2025, until all the factors combined. James says ~all this... I think he's right.

A new article on #Arday that I very largely agree with: ...

2026-08-19T11:44:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…f8nx
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A new article on #Arday that I very largely agree with: https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/9-thoughts-on-jason-arday

I spent an unplanned, and surprising to myself, amount of time ...

2026-08-17T14:42:46Z

I spent an unplanned, and surprising to myself, amount of time today trying to understand the Jason Arday situation.

Partly because I know universities better than the reporters who pursued the story for culture-war reasons, and detail was lacking; partly because away from outrage-farming and closet racism there are issues closely linked to unis' attempts to (as demanded) become more socially and economically impactful.

Anyway, probably unwisely, I wrote a thing: https://www.insectnation.org/blog/the-tragedy-of-jason-arday.html

So this puts my university's claim that MS Office365 is our ...

2025-12-24T12:53:26Z

So this puts my university's claim that MS Office365 is our only GDPR-compliant cloud platform in an interesting light. No US-owned holder of data can be GDPR compliant thanks to the US CLOUD Act 🫠 https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/europe_gets_serious_about_cutting/

I really don't get the proscription of showing a flag or ...

2025-10-07T15:48:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…s93z
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I really don't get the proscription of showing a flag or mentioning agreement (as opposed to funding or encouraging direct support, themselves also debatable when the identification as a proscribed group is so contentious).

It's such a minor thing for the state to outlaw – if they had confidence in their rightness, they'd leave it up to civil society to correct dickheadedness

If/when funding does come, it needs to be less micromanaged and ...

2025-08-28T08:58:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…5el5
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If/when funding does come, it needs to be less micromanaged and tech-chasing, and predictable rather than on-off. Trust us! So much research-expert effort is wasted on bureaucracy, and pivoting to today's one-off funded hot-button topic.

Neglecting the country's highest-skilled large workforce in a leading export is gobsmacking given the "growth" rhetoric. They're spending much more time on trying to reintroduce pre-2007 instability & short-termism to financial services 🤦‍♂️

So we have to hope that govt gets/creates enough financial ...

2025-08-28T08:54:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…w9ha
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So we have to hope that govt gets/creates enough financial headroom to be able to think about sustainable investment.

I _think_ they get that the uni sector is a national strength and can seed growth (and communities), but it's not seen as critical. Maybe they genuinely believe that magic "AI" is replacing teaching or that unis aren't keeping pace. Or perhaps we still are seen as a disconnected middle-class indulgence. There's of course some of that, but it's a tiny minority.

There's been a lot of noise about outdatedness of the uni ...

2025-08-28T08:51:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…ge43
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There's been a lot of noise about outdatedness of the uni model, but the effectiveness of remote teaching, MOOCs, bootcamps, LLMs, etc. is poor in my experience: disengaging and transactional, both for teacher and students.

Depth of understanding, critical thinking, and iterative building of higher-level conceptualisation are things for which we don't have a good alternative. And in a world increasingly full of misinformation and AI slop they are more important than ever.

That's very good: nothing we didn't know, but it covers ...

2025-08-28T08:34:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…eplv
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That's very good: nothing we didn't know, but it covers the ground well and compactly. Hopefully informative for non-uni people.

The fundamental problem (referred to in the first para) is the govt insistence that we behave like commercial entities, but limiting our prices to below subsistence. The results are inevitable and unsustainable.

I love the phrasing at the end about us living in a Second Gilded ...

2025-08-03T12:04:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…8en6
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I love the phrasing at the end about us living in a Second Gilded Age, and needing to start behaving like it.

The levels of inequality and poverty that we have, and serial reductions in public services, make no sense with the technological and intellectual capabilities at our fingertips. We're beholden to outdated models of money and taxation, which just happen to be working very well for the 0.1%

Despite this probably being the year we'll first see ...

2025-01-05T08:03:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…89ly
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Despite this probably being the year we'll first see collapses, the public is still largely unaware – there was a recent survey in which only a small minority thought unis short of money and an equal number thought we had "too much" (ha, come see our crumbling buildings and burnout-adjacent staff!) It's quite dispiriting the extent to which one of our most impactful sectors is assumed to be crying wolf, and is being told to "fix" issues caused by govt decisions

Collapses/mergers and rationalisation of the overcommercialised ...

2025-01-05T07:57:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…c2nl
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Collapses/mergers and rationalisation of the overcommercialised uni sector are inevitable... which the current gov is more attuned to, but will still be an unprecedented shock and could undermine the growth agenda via both reduction of training and removal of the often-unmentioned wider economic ecosystems seeded by (at least research-intensive) unis. /4

Despite some poor plays and much bad internal management, I'm ...

2025-01-05T07:57:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…ky0n
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Despite some poor plays and much bad internal management, I'm not sure what different strategy unis could have taken: govt systemically underfunded all other activities, and then when we were 100% reliant on exploitative international-student fees, made the visa conditions much less attractive. /3

But there is a lack of sense when it comes to expecting all ...

2025-01-05T07:48:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…rclq
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But there is a lack of sense when it comes to expecting all subjects to have market potential like that, and Golden Goose behaviours like compromising entry standards so far that despite the money there is less time for the research and scholarship that are also meant to be core university missions. (I get annoyed that public discourse on universities is almost entirely about teaching, thinking of us only as "big schools" and hence missing the R&D etc. impact) /2

Not any more: for us, three international MSc's will pay for ...

2025-01-05T07:45:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…9jde
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Not any more: for us, three international MSc's will pay for an academic post including (massive) "overheads" to cover local-fee + research+grant shortfall... or 3 students cover the uni cost of two academics if you prefer.

We have departments with 500 MSc students per year, so those fees pay the ~full academic+support costs... it's existential for us now /1

Blips/trends in intl recruitment are a symptom: their numbers are ...

2025-01-02T10:22:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…ps4l
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Blips/trends in intl recruitment are a symptom: their numbers are still huge compared to 10y ago.

The uni sector has at least £116bn economic output ( https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/higher-education-contribution-to-the-economy-and-levelling-up/) but the Con govt starved it for 14 years with inflation-eroded fees and cuts to direct funding.

We lose avg 25% on every English ug student (and 50%+ on Scots in Scotland) plus 20% loss on research council grants. Intl students are the only profitable activity, but the whole structure is simply unsustainable