by introducing the concept of the ‘fully-functioning university’ in 2008. Subsequent articles have looked at the consequences of this concept for the higher education of students and the advancement of knowledge. This article is about the fully-functioning university and its contribution to the service part of the tripartite mission; the ‘third leg’. Its main aim is to identify how social engagement can best contribute to the tripartite mission in total. The main conclusions are that: (1) there is a set of questions that can be used to help enlarge the contribution of third leg work to the advancement of knowledge, (2) there is another set of questions that can be used to help enlarge the contribution of third leg projects to the higher education of students and (3) greater use of project-based thinking within the domain of the third leg activities can support research-led, and hence evidence-based, practices and outcomes. The article ends with some implications of these conclusions and some questions surfaced by this enquiry.
This qualitative analysis draws upon data from a broader research study that sought to understand early career researchers’ (ECRs) experiences of journeying from post-PhD researcher to independent PI status. A number of unprompted references made by interviewees to their broader lives (i.e., aspects beyond work) when charting their academic trajectories led us to examine this issue more closely. Contrary to existing work, we found that work and family life negotiation is an important concern of both female and male ECRs, although they conceive of it somewhat differently. Our results indicate that there is a need for academic institutions, policymakers, and academe leaders to be attentive to the life issues of both men and women when designing provision for reconciling work and family life in the academic work space.
Teaching standards within the UK’s higher education sector are under unprecedented scrutiny not only in terms of perceived ‘highly variable’ standards of teaching but also in relation to the clear attainment gap between black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students and their white counterparts. Gentle taps at the door to the higher education sector, which have highlighted both the inequality of educational experience and the need for reform, have been largely ignored leading, ultimately, to the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The authors suggest that in much the same way that Edger Allen Poe’s slumbering scholar revisits ‘forgotten lore’, so too the time has come for higher education institutions to fundamentally rethink the way in which curriculum delivery should take place for the benefit of all students. Consequently, the authors assert that the proper and effective implementation of the classical Socratic Method could provide a viable response to the TEF’s call of “Nevermore”.
