Nick Gibbins

A departmental perspective on HE funding

Bumped into our head of school (and my former PhD supervisor) during lunch today and asked for her opinions on the likely outcome to the school of tonight’s debate, specifically the effects on student demographics. Her response was that the school is already planning to reduce the number of UK undergraduates and increase the number from overseas (predominantly non-EU), and that this was a fairly common move across the University.

His colour sicken’d more and more

Now that I seem to be adoptive Scot by virtue of marriage, I now feel obliged to take note of those dates in the Scottish calendar that those of us raised south of the border are by birth inclined to ignore. Tonight is Burns Night, being the 245th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Tomorrow night, the library are having their Burns supper, at which will be giving her first Immortal Memory (I suspect much to the pride of her grandfather, who has given her his thoughts for a new address on Burns-as-revolutionary-figure), and for which I’ve spent the… Read More »His colour sicken’d more and more

eBay wish list

I would like this. If that is not available, I would like one of these. That is all.

I hate travelling…

…but there was a day when I thought that I’d relish it. Over the last few months, I’ve ended up travelling to the US, South Korea, France and the Netherlands (all within the same four weeks). This would have been One Big Adventure had it not all happened in such a short period. This pattern seems set to continue this year, with Glorious Leader sending me to meetings that he’s too busy to attend himself, normally because he’s at other meetings. Some of these meetings are cool, like the one on board an aircraft carrier, not least because I could… Read More »I hate travelling…