David Willetts is the politician responsible, above all others, in the United Kingdom for the £9,000 student fee level and its associated phenomena (including the privatization in all-but-name of UK universities). Yet he also writes extremely well of the essential unfairness and breaking of the intergenerational contract between the baby boomers and the millennials in which the latter bear a huge burden while the former group prosper.

Research Fortnight is running an interesting piece about [the REF consultation document that was pulled late last year](https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/uk/ref-2014/2016/2/-Anyone-for-5--research---HEFCE-asked-in-postponed-consultation-.html). Indeed, while the sector is desperate for information about the requirements for the next REF (we're currently playing somewhat blind), the consultation has been postponed while the Stern

At the time of a global health emergency -- the Zika virus -- there are renewed calls for a faster and more open research publication system in disciplines where lives may be saved. This is important, valuable work. We should not be letting people suffer through the slowness of output. The remarks in this post do not apply to those spaces of biomedical advance, on which I am not qualified to comment.

Last night I spent almost three hours reading [the full Ofqual statistical paper on subject comparability at school level in the UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/486936/3-inter-subject-comparability-of-exam-standards-in-gcse-and-a-level.pdf). I am not a statistician (obviously) but I've set out below my working through of what they have presented and the underlying assumptions that they have made in

Last week, the [Tickell review of open access in the United Kingdom](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-access-to-research-independent-advice) was published. There are no unwelcome nasty surprises in the review and, in fact, there are a number of extremely progressive elements, most notably the formation of a monographs sub-committee to address this increasingly important area of practice.

I'm not one to mope or to seek any special sympathy but this month marks an ambivalent anniversary for me and I promised myself I'd write publicly about it. I want to do so because I know other people who have had a similar experience and someone else might find this blog and find it of interest. Ten years ago I was a very strong and fit young man, whose primary life-interest, to be blunt, was competition bouldering;

Today I don't feel well. In fact, I've got some horrible virus that's confining me mostly to bed, which I hate.

I had some utterly fantastic news yesterday that I think/hope it's now OK for me to share. At the start of the next academic year (from 1st October 2016) I will take up a personal chair as Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at my wonderful institution, Birkbeck, University of London. Ever since I had an idea to try for a career in academia a full professorship has been my dream;

The Budapest Open Access Initiative statement begins: "An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good". The old tradition is the practice of scientists and scholars to publish their work without remuneration. The new technologies are the internet and the world wide web. It remains true that it is a conjunction of these elements that can make open access work in academia.

I keep trying to write about the economics of open access to academic books via Book Processing Charges (BPCs) in a clear way. So there's nothing really new in this post but I think I did stumble today upon a way of putting things that I've said before in a different and more concise fashion.

An [article in the Times Higher Education yesterday](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/several-london-post-92s-see-falls-battle-students) got me thinking about institutional stability, finance, and the ongoing "reforms" to UK higher education.