Is Humour Really The Last Stand For British Academia?

The recent UCU strike over pension rights has brought to public attention the long simmering problem of the commercialisation of higher education. A lot has been written about how students are now seen as consumers, universities fretting about the bottom line and academics being hounded by managers in pursuit of Key Performance Indicators. What is less written about is how lonely academic life has become.Teaching in modern ‘commercialised’ higher education risks that academics lose t