The week in higher education – 27 October 2022

Love is a beautiful thing, but perhaps best expressed outside of academic conferences. Fang Daining, a leading scientist in China’s hypersonic weapons programme, became the subject of an official investigation after he was caught on livestream being smooched during a scholarly meeting by a woman believed to be a postdoctoral researcher, the South China Morning Post reported. Professor Fang is the former vice-president of the Beijing Institute of Technology and a senior member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was the first researcher in China to independently develop a series of ultra-high-temperature testing tools critical to developing China’s aerospace industry, according to the paper. But things got a bit too hot for the scientist when China’s internet took notice of the kiss, and the official site of BIT’s Institute of Advanced Structure Technology, where Professor Fang is an honorary president, was taken offline not long after.

Staying on issues of the heart, researchers have suggested that those playing the dating app game would do well not to lean too heavily on photos, focusing more on original text. Academics at Tilburg University examined the role of profile biographies on dating platforms for a study published in the journal Plos One. They found that study participants gave higher scores for intelligence and humour to users with more original profiles, also rating them as more physically and romantically attractive, according to The Guardian. But, lest readers misunderstand, being more original is not the same as simply being weird. Per The Guardian: “Higher perceived originality was not associated with the author being deemed more odd, and authors judged as odd were deemed to have low originality.”

Any University of Texas at Austin students missing Fido might be relieved to hear their campus will soon host a number of four-footed companions, if not of a furry kind. Under a $3.6 million (£3.2 million) grant from the National Science Foundation, robot delivery dogs will make their debut on the campus next year, according to the Austin-American Statesman. The campus will be the site of a five-year study to examine the interactions between robots and campus community, with researchers and students able to order supplies via robot. Should there be any unruly canine behaviour, though, human minders will be close at hand. According to the Statesman, “the robots will go out in pairs and will be monitored by chaperones and people remotely – allowing them to stop the robots if needed”. 

Ingenuity in academia takes many forms, some of them less sanctioned than others. A law student at the University of Malaga found himself on the receiving end of both censure and appreciation when he displayed impressive artistry in an attempt to cheat on an exam, Mail Online reported. The student etched tiny answers into blue ballpoint pens. Unfortunately for the young man, the writing utensils were confiscated during his exam on criminal procedural law. Years later, they were found by his professor as she was clearing out a drawer. Looking back, she still appreciates the effort. On social media, she wrote: “The criminal procedural law in Bic pens. What art! Cheat sheets aren’t like they used to be.” One does wonder whether memorising the answers wouldn’t have been faster. But with such artistry, wouldn’t the student be missing his calling by pursuing a career in law?

What’s harder than being president of the United States? Being president of a US university, and that’s according to someone with rare insight on the issue – Joe Biden himself. Speaking at Delaware State University, Mr Biden recounted how after he left the vice-presidency in 2017, and following the death of his son Beau, he “wasn’t going to get involved in politics any more”, so he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “But before that occurred, three universities came to me and said they wanted to interview me to consider my being a president of the university,” Mr Biden said. He recalled how his wife, Jill Biden, soon squashed this idea. “My wife, who’s a professor at a community college – she has two master’s and a PhD, and she’s smarter than me – looked at me and she said, ‘If you do that, I’m leaving you.’ She said it’s one of the toughest jobs in America, especially if you start arguing about parking spaces and office windows.”