The week in higher education – 12 October 2023

“Stop getting Bond wrong,” Steve Coogan – in character as Alan Partridge – laments in one of his most famous scenes. But the comic’s commitment to accuracy apparently did not extend to the film he wrote and produced about Richard III, if the lawsuit he now faces is to be believed. The Sun reported that Mr Coogan is being sued by Richard Taylor, the former deputy registrar at the University of Leicester, over the way he was portrayed in The Lost King. Mr Taylor played a leading role in the successful search for the king’s remains that were found under a car park in Leicester in 2012. But he said he had been “shell shocked” at the way the film had characterised him as a “sexist bully”. “I’m portrayed as a bullying, cynical, double-crossing, devious manipulator which is bad,” Mr Taylor – now chief operating officer at Loughborough University – told the paper. “But when you add I behave in a sexist way and a way that seems to mock Richard III’s disabilities, you get into the realm of defamation.”

Her Carrie Bradshaw character in Sex and the City was known as a style icon but Sarah Jessica Parker’s latest choice of fashion accessory has left many people baffled. She was papped in New York sporting aviator shades, massive headphones and…two UCL tote bags. While such bags have become a mainstay of university recruitment teams the world over, academics struggled to fathom how they might have found their way into the hands of the Hollywood star. “Are UCL totes now style-forward? Move over Carrie’s Fendi baguette?” said Xine Yao, an associate professor at UCL on X, formerly Twitter. The fullness of the bags also attracted comment. “Has anyone checked on the whereabouts of Bentham's head?” asked another commentator.

“Harry Potter studies” was once derided by sweary Conservative MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns during her short stint as England’s skills minister, despite no courses studying the boy wizard actually existing at the time. However, her rant may have inspired the University of Exeter, which, a year later, has become the first UK university to offer a postgraduate degree in magic, The Daily Telegraph reported. Emily Selove, associate professor in medieval Arabic language and literature, who leads the course, said it has been launched because of a “recent surge in interest in magic and the occult inside and outside of academia” and it would be “foolish” to ignore the part magic has played in Western culture. Exeter sought to fend off jibes about “Mickey Mouse” degrees early by pointedly listing the range of careers its graduates could consider, from teaching to tourism. Those hoping to train to become actual wizards may have to look elsewhere.

When is an academic truly working? The answer to this question has become more and more blurry in recent years, particularly for casual staff who are paid by the hour. Faced with a A$9 million (£4.7 million) bill for allegedly underpaying lecturers, Monash University attempted to retrospectively rewrite its own employment rules to define scheduled staff-student interactions occurring up to a week before or after related lectures and tutorials as “contemporaneous consultations” that required no payment. These efforts were rejected by Australia’s Fair Work Commission deputy president Andrew Bell in a decision that has now been upheld by the body’s full board. The National Tertiary Education Union’s efforts to ensure staff are reimbursed will now resume, with president Alison Barnes saying it was the “end of the road for Monash’s extraordinary attempt to dodge a wage theft claim”. There is, however, another bend coming; Monash has said it intends to review the full bench appeal decision. 

Rumours have abounded that Just Stop Oil, the environmentalist group known for its confrontational tactics, has been “infiltrating” UK universities to recruit impressionable students to its mission to “paralyse London”. The education secretary Gillian Keegan even issued a warning to university leaders to be on guard for “a heightened risk of unlawful activity” on campuses. Anyone wishing to quash the unfolding uprising would not have had to look far, however. It seems the radical group’s indoctrination plans were no more imaginative than your average student society trying to convince freshers to part with £5 for a yearly membership. The Daily Mail reported that Just Stop Oil organised a slightly sorry-looking stall at the University of Oxford’s freshers’ fair and continued its recruitment blitz by posting leaflets into student cubbyholes. The UK’s capital is awaiting the inevitable chaos that will no doubt ensue.