UK universities draw up guiding principles on generative AI

All 24 Russell Group universities have reviewed their academic conduct policies and guidance

UK universities have drawn up a set of guiding principles to ensure that students and staff are AI literate, as the sector struggles to adapt teaching and assessment methods to deal with the growing use of generative artificial intelligence.

Vice-chancellors at the 24 Russell Group research-intensive universities have signed up to the code. They say this will help universities to capitalise on the opportunities of AI while simultaneously protecting academic rigour and integrity in higher education.

Lecturers don’t want a marking boycott, either. But we must fight those wrecking UK universities | Lorna Finlayson

Pay cuts are just one factor: working conditions are also getting worse and that’s bad for both staff and students

Since late April, staff at 145 UK universities have been refusing to mark students’ work. The marking and assessment boycott is the most recent action by the University and College Union (UCU), which represents academics and other university staff. With graduation ceremonies now upon us, the boycott is causing significant havoc. Just how significant is a matter of some dispute. But what is indisputable is that many students have had their marks delayed, and some will be unable to graduate as normal this summer.

Industrial action by (mainly) academic staff is always a hard sell. Lecturers are seen as relatively privileged people. The students being hit by their latest action have already had their studies disrupted by a pandemic and a series of strikes. Seen this way, the current marking boycott can look like a selfish step too far.

Lorna Finlayson is a philosophy lecturer at the University of Essex

Red wall Tory MPs put pressure on Sunak over net migration

Group issues 12-point plan calling for stricter immigration rules for care workers, students and refugees

Rishi Sunak is facing demands from “red wall” Conservative MPs to slash the number of overseas care workers, foreign students and refugees allowed into the UK in time for the next election.

The MPs from the 2017 and 2019 intake, who call themselves the New Conservatives, have issued a 12-point plan to cut net migration to Britain from 606,000 to 226,000 before the end of 2024.

A cap of 20,000 on the number of refugees accepted for resettlement in the UK.

Caps on future humanitarian schemes such as the Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong schemes should the predicted 168,000 reductions not be realised.

Implementation of the provisions of the illegal migration bill, which it is claimed would lead to a reduction of at least 35,000 from LTIM.

A raise in the minimum combined income threshold to £26,200 for sponsoring a spouse and raising the minimum language requirement to B1 (intermediate level). This should lead to an estimated 20,000 reduction in LTIM, the MPs claim.

Making the migration advisory committee report on the effect of migration on housing and public services, not just the jobs market, by putting future demand on a par with labour requirements in all studies.

A 5% cap on the amount of social housing that councils can give to non-UK nationals.

Raising the immigration health surcharge to £2,700 per person a year.

Wednesday briefing: Inside the marking boycott that has thrown university students’ futures into the air

In today’s newsletter: A stalemate between lecturers and universities has left thousands of exams and dissertations ungraded – what’s the dispute about, and how might it end?

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Good morning. Finishing the last exam of your degree course should be one of the happiest moments of a student’s career. The stress of finals is over, the hard work has paid off. Graduation beckons and, beyond that, the next exciting stage of life.

But for tens of thousands this summer, the reality is proving very different. A marking boycott by the union representing many UK university lecturers means that tests are being left ungraded and dissertations unassessed.

Net zero | The government’s plans to hit net zero have been criticised in a report by its own advisers that warns targets are being missed on nearly every front. Lord Deben, outgoing chair of the CCC, said the UK had “lost the leadership” on climate action shown at Cop26 in 2021 and done “a number of things” that were “utterly unacceptable”.

Julian Sands | A body that was discovered in the wilderness near Mount Baldy in California on Saturday has been confirmed to be that of the missing British actor Julian Sands. San Bernardino county sheriff’s department had been coordinating a search for the actor who was reported missing on 13 January.

Health | Senior doctors in England have voted to go on strike over pay for the first time in nearly 50 years. Hospital consultants will strike for two days on 20 July, which will bring major disruption to services that have already had to reschedule 651,000 appointments since a wave of NHS strikes began last December.

Covid | Matt Hancock has said he is “profoundly sorry” for his part in mistakes that meant the UK was not properly prepared for Covid. He told the Covid public inquiry that he had not properly challenged assurances that sufficient planning was in place.

UK economy | The UK’s largest mobile and broadband companies have been accused of fuelling “greedflation” after pushing through the biggest round of price hikes for more than 30 years. Six companies controlling most of the telecoms market all charged a 3.9% supplement on top of their annual inflation-linked increases this year, meaning millions of customers have faced mid-contract price increases of up to 17.3%.

Marking boycott may delay degrees of more than 1,000 Durham students

University says about 20% of final-year students will face delays if industrial action continues

More than 1,000 final year students at Durham University could be left without a degree this summer because of the marking boycott disrupting universities across the UK.

Durham, one of 145 universities affected by the industrial action over pay and working conditions called by the University and College Union (UCU), said about 20% of its 5,300 final year students would “at the moment, face delays in receiving all their marks and final classifications”.

The Guardian view on universities: arts cuts are the tip of an iceberg | Editorial

Ministers are ultimately responsible for weakening the arts and humanities. They are taking the country backwards

The announcement that the University of East Anglia is to cut 31 arts and humanities posts – out of a total of 36 academic job cuts – has rightly prompted anger as well as dismay. UEA became a literary flagship among the new universities that opened in the 1960s. This year is its 60th birthday, and since 1970 it has been home to one of the most famous creative writing courses in the world: founded by the novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, its students have included Anne Enright, Ian McEwan and the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.

There is shock, among alumni and observers, that the financial problems of the UK’s higher education sector now threaten such prestigious institutions. Once celebrated for their innovative approaches, 1960s campus universities were where different kinds of courses were developed. Creative writing is one example; media, development and women’s studies are others. In cutting the arts and humanities in these universities, managers and policymakers are turning back the clock – at a time when, arguably, there has never been a greater need for courageous innovation. Any idea that the risks are limited to the post-1992 universities should be junked.

Osman Durrani obituary

My former colleague Osman Durrani, who has died aged 77, was a scholar of German literature and culture with a broad range of research interests. He wrote books on Goethe, Faust and the Bible (1977) and Faust: Icon of Modern Culture (2004), and another on fictions of Germany in the modern novel. He also edited an anthology of German Romantic poetry and had a collection of his poems, After Sunset, published in 1978.

There was more to Osman’s range than classical literature, though. He was a close observer of the contemporary literary scene, a friend of the novelist Joseph von Westphalen, and a key participant in the 1990s at conferences on post-unification German themes, one of which he organised himself at University College Durham in 1994, resulting in the publication The New Germany: Literature and Society after Unification, co-edited with Colin Good and Kevin Hilliard. To the end of his life he enjoyed reviewing books, for academic journals and the Times Literary Supplement, insisting that a review should never take more than a day to write.

The backlash: how slavery research came under fire – podcast

Read more in this series: Cotton Capital

More and more institutions are commissioning investigations into their historical links to slavery – but the fallout at one Cambridge college suggests these projects are meeting growing resistance

‘I haven’t had a single normal year at university’: the UK students graduating without a graded degree

An unlucky cohort of undergraduates has been plagued by Covid restrictions, education strikes and finally a marking boycott

Emily Smith, a final-year geography student at Durham University, never imagined her already heavily disrupted university experience could end like this. She won’t be graduating this summer because half her work remains unmarked owing to a national marking boycott by lecturers.

She refuses to attend the “completion ceremony” Durham has offered her instead. Without an actual degree classification it seems like a “farce”. Like so many in this deeply unlucky cohort of students, she feels this is the last straw.

Third of UK final-year students face grades delay due to marking boycott

Small number could attend graduation but later be told they have failed as pay dispute affects assessments at 145 universities

Tens of thousands of university students are being left in limbo without their final degree results this summer, including some who could attend graduation ceremonies only to be told later that they have failed.

About a third of the UK’s 500,000 final-year undergraduates are thought to have been affected by the marking and assessment boycott at 145 universities, part of the pay dispute between the University and College Union (UCU) and employers that has strained relations between staff, students and management.

Tory MPs voice concerns over tabled ban on public bodies boycotting Israel

Exclusive: Backbenchers tell Michael Gove they may oppose bill designed to stop sanctions separate to those set by government

Michael Gove is on a collision course with a handful of Conservative MPs over his plans to stop public bodies boycotting Israel.

A group of Tory backbenchers have made clear to the levelling up, housing and communities secretary they have concerns about the economic activity of public bodies bill, which is due to return to the Commons within weeks for a second reading.

Cost of living crisis forcing students to take on more hours of paid work

Most university students supporting themselves say it is negatively affecting their studies, survey finds

The cost of living crisis is forcing more university students to take on more hours in their part-time jobs, with most saying that supporting themselves is affecting their studies, according to a new study.

More than half of the 10,000 students surveyed by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) said they did paid work during term time, with most saying they were using their wages to support their studies.

‘Dutch by default’: Netherlands seeks curbs on English-language university courses

Education bill to require two-thirds of content for standard bachelor’s degrees to be in Dutch

As Britain voted to leave the EU, Dutch universities began offering more courses in English and foreigners streamed in.

But with 122,287 international students in higher education in the Netherlands – 15% of all the country’s students – the government is proposing a cap on the number of students from outside the European Economic Area in some subjects and forcing universities to offer at least two-thirds of the content of standard bachelor’s degrees in Dutch, unless a university justifies an exemption.

UK graduates: have you been affected by marking boycotts?

We would like to hear from people who have left university without a degree classification or with ungraded work

A marking and assessment boycott has affected 145 universities, meaning that some students will leave university this summer without degree classifications, or with work ungraded. Students at the University of Edinburgh, for example, say they will be given an “empty piece of paper” when they graduate.

Are you leaving university without a degree classification or with work unmarked? How will this affect you, for instance when applying for jobs or other courses?

Selling yourself is a minefield for all of us – not just students. Here's how to do it in 600 words | Katy Guest

The fine art of self-promotion is more vital than ever – and crafting a personal statement is apt training for modern life

“I didn’t have the time to write you a short letter, so I’m writing you a long one instead,” Mark Twain is supposed to have written on a postcard to his friend. Good writers have always known that distilling one’s thoughts into a limited space takes effort and skill. (Bad writers sprinkle around lots of footnotes and pretend they’re not included in the word count.) So it must be immensely frustrating to whittle your life story and all your aspirations into about 600 words, only to find that the recipient has merely skim-read them. That’s the experience of students writing a UK university application personal statement – limited to 4,000 characters – which harassed admissions staff now only spend about two minutes reading.

I sympathise with the students, who are obliged to waffle on about all the hobbies they’re expected to be beavering away at while simultaneously studying for A-levels and probably holding down a part-time job. But perhaps universities are teaching them a valuable, if brutal lesson. Two minutes’ attention from a time-pressed stranger is a luxury that they will seldom enjoy in adulthood. It’s also more than enough time to read 600 words. So, if they can’t sell themselves in a short essay, how are they ever going to get anyone to open their emails, read their Tinder profiles, or pay attention to their strongly worded complaint to the British Airways customer services team? At what age is it appropriate to learn that everyone else is just too busy to listen to you selling yourself?

Katy Guest is a writer, reviewer and editor

Student loan debt in England surpasses £200bn for first time

Graduates now owe an average amount of £45,000, Student Loans Company figures have revealed

Outstanding student loans in England have surpassed £200bn for the first time – 20 years earlier than previous government forecasts, as the number of students at universities continues to outstrip expectations.

The Student Loans Company (SLC), which administers tuition and maintenance loans in England, said that the balance of government-backed loans reached £205bn in the current academic year, including £19bn worth of new loans to undergraduates. The figure has doubled in just six years. It reached more than £100bn in 2016-17 after the coalition government decided to increase undergraduate tuition fees from £3,600 a year to £9,000 in 2012.

UK public buildings feared to be at risk of collapse as concrete crumbles

Ministers launch inquiry into use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC)

Ministers have launched a UK government-wide inquiry into the use of crumbling concrete in public buildings following fears that nurseries, offices, shops and leisure facilities are in danger of collapse.

Every Whitehall department has been ordered to assign a civil servant to identify the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) across the £158bn government estate, the Guardian has learned.

The pandemic ruined my A-levels – now the marking boycott casts a shadow over my degree | Kimi Chaddah

For those students sitting final university exams like me, this summer’s graduations are clouded by chaos and uncertainty

This year’s graduations, universities claim, will be indistinguishable from those of previous years. Except there’s one glaring problem: as a student there isn’t much to celebrate. Currently, a marking and assessment boycott is affecting 145 British universities and, like many of the thousands of students graduating this summer, I am set to leave without a formal classification.

For the class of 2023, the same year-group whose GCSEs were reformed in 2018 and A-levels cancelled in 2020, this marks the end of a deeply dispiriting educational journey.

Kimi Chaddah is a student at Durham University and a writer on education and politics

This article was amended on 13 June 2023. An earlier headline said that the writer would be left “without a degree”; this is not the case for students at Durham University. An earlier subheading implied that negotiations had halted at Durham University, while they are ongoing. Engagement in negotiations varies (an earlier version said there was “no negotiation from university management”) and all marks do not have to be received before a final degree can be awarded. A comment from Durham University denying that inexperienced people are marking exam papers has been added.

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The big idea: do we need to dismantle the literary canon?

The temptation to chuck out the old is strong, but can only be part of the answer

As someone who writes books, lectures on teacher training courses and spent 15 years teaching English literature, I’m often asked what I think should be included in the literary canon or what should replace the existing canon. It feels like a trick question.

First, a definition might be useful. When we say canon we’re referring to an established selection of works that have been dyed into the fabric of British education. It’s the familiar roll call of names that have featured on the curriculum seemingly for ever, and may well continue to do so. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Orwell, Blake, Priestley, Owen, Larkin … the parade of (largely) dead white men whom successive generations of British students are invited to meet and grapple with on their academic journeys.

Jenny Warner obituary

My friend Jenny Warner, who has died aged 87, was a speech therapist and one of the three founding members, in the mid-1970s, of the faculty in speech pathology and therapy at the University of Manchester. There she combined clinical practice with lecturing and writing academic papers and practical works.

Born in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya (now Malaysia), Jenny escaped the Japanese occupation of the country with her mother, Winifred (nee Herbertson), a secretary, at the age of six. After making their way to Singapore, they secured passage to Britain on the last evacuation ship to leave, in January 1942. Her father, Stanley Warner, who served in the RAF, rejoined the family in August of that year but was killed a few months later during a German bombing raid while he was a patient at the RAF officers’ hospital based at the Palace hotel in Torquay, Devon, in 1942.