The week in higher education – 10 November 2022

Tickets for her upcoming Las Vegas residency are selling for as much as $45,000 (£39,300) a head, but for Adele there is one thing missing: a degree. The British singing superstar has revealed plans to take time out from music to complete a degree in English literature. “I really want to get a degree in English literature. If I hadn’t made it in my singing, I think I would definitely be an English lit teacher,” she told an audience in Los Angeles, according to The Times. “I definitely feel like I use my passion of English lit in what I do. But even though it’s not like I’d go on to get a job from my degree, I wish I had gone to university, I wish I’d had that experience.” Anyone hoping to share halls with one of the world’s best-selling artists is likely to be disappointed, with Adele confirming that she would study online, adding: “That’s my plan for 2025. It’s just to get the qualifications.”

Anyone seeking confirmation that long-running confinements on campus have taken their toll on Chinese students probably need look no further than a craze for making cardboard dogs. Students across the country have been crafting animal companions out of recycled cardboard in a bid to cure boredom and loneliness, even placing them at their door and taking them for a walk when going for lunch or a PCR test, the South China Morning Post reported. Chinese media have described mounting discontent among university students, some of whom are still barred from leaving campuses as the country persists with its “zero Covid” strategy. “A cardboard dog doesn’t get old or fall ill. It needn’t endure disinfection and it will always wait for me at the door,” one student said on Weibo, referring to the common practice of disinfecting pets when their owners are placed in quarantine, which has sometimes led to death.

Are you, like almost everyone else, tired of reminders from management to complete your cybersecurity training? Perhaps IT could learn from the University of Notre Dame, which livened things up with a cybersecurity carnival that boasted games, skits and art parodies – plus 1,600 balloons, 9,750 sweets and 1,500 bags of popcorn. A cybersecurity strongman game asked attendees to choose the strongest password from a list of options, while in a “museum of mishaps” famous artworks were altered to depict digital security gaffes, Inside Higher Ed reported – with Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring becoming “Girl with an Open Webcam” and Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard reimagined as “Boy Bitten by a Phish”. The university even recruited students to promote the event, dressed as police officers handing out “tickets” and as “cybersecurity clowns” wearing t-shirts saying “my password is 1234”. Ninety-six per cent of attendees said that they would recommend the event.

Almost as widespread as the dislike of cybersecurity training is the fear attached to the introduction of a new IT system. This anxiety turned out to be well-founded at the University of Edinburgh, where the introduction of a new centralised payments system has caused chaos, leaving suppliers and PhD students not receiving money owed to them. The transition saw significant purchases suspended for nearly six weeks – leading to some laboratories starting to run out of supplies – with continuing hold-ups in paying invoices resulting in some suppliers suspending the university from ordering. Although the foul-up did not affect the regular payroll, unions said that it was “unacceptable for staff to face delays in being paid what they’re owed for work they’ve done”. Edinburgh said it was “working tirelessly to process the increased volume of outstanding invoices”.

If you thought the days of the Queen’s English reigning supreme were over, think again, with a survey conducted in UK universities by the Sutton Trust finding that one in three students have been mocked or criticised over their accent. Those in higher education surveyed for the Sutton Trust’s Accent Bias in Britain project generally reported feeling more self-conscious about a regional accent compared with sixth-form pupils and professionals. Anxiety was most acute among those approaching the end of their degrees as thoughts turned to the next career stage, the research found. Students also reported feeling hesitant to speak up in lectures or tutorials because of their accent, with one participant saying their Lancashire dialect had been described as “uneducated and aggressive”.