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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2026-27)

  2. As we approach the US job market season again, can anyone with any insight into the matter say anything about…

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  • Banning laptops in the (UK) classroom?

    In our August “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    Has anyone in the UK banned laptops in their classroom? How did it go if so? And for anyone who has done this, how did you justify it to the students, and did you face any opposition? What did you do if a student was using their laptop or phone anyway?

    I’ve done this in the US, and I’ve found that after some initial trepidation, students have responded surprisingly well. Occasionally, a student will pull out a device and I’ll just ask them to put it away. But maybe things are different elsewhere.

    Do any UK readers have helpful experiences or insights to share?

    3

  • When long review times lead papers to get out of date, frustrating reviewers?

    In our August “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    I was hoping to get some advice, or maybe just a discussion about a troubling side effect of the enormous length of time papers are under review.

    On several occasions now I’ve had a situation where one review report takes much, much longer (on the scale of several months) than the other, and it affects the subsequent dialogue in response. E.g.:

    1) Paper submitted in March
    2) Reviewer 1 submits review in two weeks.
    3) Second reviewer (who admittedly may have been secured later than Reviewer 1) submits review in mid-August – R&R granted.
    4) Since the reviewers raise deep, substantive concerns, I work hard on the response and substantially re-write the paper, resulting in a response to R&R in early November.
    5) Reviewer 1’s response to my response reflects impatience with delay or a change in the dialectic (“As I wrote early this year…”; “A now forthcoming paper from X raises this point…”).

    Is there anything that can be done to avoid what seems to be a sense of resentment on behalf of Reviewer 1 that they are being dragged back to a long-forgotten or slightly out of date paper?

    Any helpful thoughts from readers?

    2

  • Undergrads lacking basic college prep?

    In our August “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    This may be old man shouting at the clouds, but I’ve noticed undergrads lacking basic preparation for college.

    First, they can’t write straight even on ruled paper.

    They mix uppercase and lowercase letters randomly, so I’m not sure they understand the difference.

    I’ve never seen so many college students write in pencils.

    They cannot read a five hundred word excerpt and tell me the main idea.

    By far, the most alarming thing I’ve noticed is they have difficulty manipulating their learning. What I mean is, they have difficulty combining the skills they’ve learned to solve a problem on their own. They wait for you to give them the answer, and they will write it down to give the answer back to you.

    I’m increasingly at a loss of how to teach them, because they’re not really at a level to understand complex texts or how to apply it.

    Has anyone experienced similar things and have tips on how to teach?

    Thoughts/tips from readers?

    7

  • Assessing students with an at-home essay without oral exams/software monitoring?

    In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

    In the paragon of arrested development that is UK higher education, I am required to assess my MA students this autumn like this: 100% of their grade will be an at-home essay of 3,000 words. Essay prompts must be submitted by me in advance. What the hell do I do given the state of LLMs, which are better than the vast majority of my students. I also don’t think there is much room for us to accuse students based on pangram or similar, there has to be hard evidence and the process is an ordeal. I am beyond being outraged by this and now just wondering:
    – is there anything i can do to mitigate this more than a sham assessment?
    – if it’s not, how should i approach it as a grader? Just mark the best essays with the highest grades regardless of how obviously they are AI-generated (assuming they aren’t catchable).
    – how should i explain the assignment to my students? should i just say ‘no AI use’ and we all pretend they won’t? Say ‘we both know you’re going to do it so let’s just focus on the non-assessed parts of the course and learn some philosophy’?
    -how would you approach this? Give a spiel about how they’re wasting a great opportunity to expand their minds if they outsource their essay to AI, etc.?

    Just to add: I can’t do anything interview the students / do oral exam type audits, and I can’t do anything like ask them to use software that monitors their workflow.

    This sounds like a really tough situation given the constraints the OP has to work within (given that we are all in a hard-enough situation with assessing at-home work already).

    Do readers have any helpful tips to share?

    15