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Wojciech Kopec

@wojciechkopec.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.1K following 133 posts

Lecturer in Computational Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Queen Mary University of London | Visiting Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences | Computational Electrophysiology & Ion Channels Poland->Denmark->USA->Germany->UK..?

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Reposted by Wojciech Kopec
Durham UCU @ducu.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
And here we are! Literally every spine point is paying less in real terms than it was back in 2008. Spine point 5 (now replaced by the real living wage) is down by about 3.4%. By spine point 10, we're down over 10%. By spine point 23, over 20%, ultimately reaching a 22.1% reduction. 3/3
Graph of spine points 5 (now real living wage) to 16.Graph of spine points 17 to 28.Graph of spine points 29 t0 40.Graph of spine points 41 to 52.
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Reposted by Wojciech Kopec
Rob Hawkes @robbhawkes.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
moneyontheleft.org/2025/01/16/u...
The two buttons meme with the UK government faced with a choice between rethinking HE funding and increasing tuition fees
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
www.ft.com/content/7144... another thing that makes moving to the UK difficult and should be removed ASAP - simply does not make sense
ft.com
Scientists charged too much to come to work in UK, says Royal Society
Combined upfront cost of the five-year Global Talent Visa and the Immigration Health Surcharge stands at £5,941
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Reposted by Wojciech Kopec
Stu Cantrill @stuartcantrill.com · 13/10/2025
‘Economics Nobel prize won by researchers who showed how science boosts growth’ by @philipcball.bsky.social in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Screenshot that reads:

The award "underlies the importance in investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth", says economist Diane Coyle of the University of Cambridge. "It's great to see the Nobel prize recognize the importance of this topic," adds innovation policy researcher Richard Jones of the University of Manchester, UK. "It's important that economists understand the conditions that lead to technological progress," he adds. The winners, says Coyle, "have long been on people's list of potential candidates".
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/10...
taxresearch.org.uk
Why is Labour hanging our universities out to dry?
Politics Home noted this last night: The head of the University and College Union, Jo Grady, has warned that universities face a financial calamity similar to the 2008 banking crisis, accusing the gov...
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Reposted by Wojciech Kopec
UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Destroying UK HE through completely backwards policies that perpetuate a death spiral for the sector is not novel, though. It's the endgame for two decades of erosion and implosion.
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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
@dabiophysicist.bsky.social I just found a news-and-views article about the Aldrich lab's classic work on Shaker K+ channel inactivation. An *amazing* snapshot-in-time, in the pre-structural era but with everyone knowing it's only a matter of time. What an amazing piece of science reporting!
Apologies, this is too long for alt text. Here is the (paywalled) hyperlink: 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2878436Apologies, this is too long for alt text. Here is the (paywalled) hyperlink: 
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2878436
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The Guy From Yesterday @akma.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
And before 'austerity', HE was one of our world-leading (almost world-*defining*) sectors; raising fees, cutting funding, imposing the disastrous REF regimen, and redefining HE as employment preparation has utterly eviscerated the core ethos and role of our universities.
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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
UK Universities cut 12,000 jobs, more on the way. 40% of Unis in financial crisis. Major exporter destroyed by successive govts Obstacles for foreign students. Low fees in England, lack of govt funding. £267bn student debt. Home student numbers down. How will the UK compete with other nations?
bbc.co.uk
Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens
University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Dear Dr. Kopec, I hereby confirm the receipt of your application for the vacancy Junior Professorship with Tenure Track in Theoretical Chemistry. Due to our experience it will take usually about one year to reach a final decision on the offered position. Found in old emails. Apply early folks 😀
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Reposted by Wojciech Kopec
Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Curbing ‘unfunded’ research ‘could chase away academics’. Researchers wary of signals from senior figures that universities “can’t afford” research without external funding. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...
researchprofessionalnews.com
Curbing ‘unfunded’ research ‘could chase away academics’ - Research Professional News
Researchers wary of signals from senior figures that universities “can’t afford” research without external funding
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Supervising project students in the UK - here are your data, research plan, meetings scheduled week by week, marking sheets and examples from last 5 years Supervising project students in Eastern Europe - i just read about this new theory, it is now your topic, see you in 6 months
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Science Funders > we want you to do research that challenges the current understanding of life Also science funders > we will give you one postdoc for 2 years
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
A brilliant piece in the FT about the human and institutional cost of overreliance on international student fees. Managers are making our most vulnerable students pay the price of a failing funding model and are skewing the purposes of university in their pursuit of fees. www.ft.com/content/3f49...

	Page argues franchising — where students are disproportionately from poorer backgrounds — has been oversold as a means for widening participation. In reality, he says, it often leaves students behind, with outcomes “taking down our overall metrics”.

Staff were never comfortable with the franchise-heavy model, he says. “Voices were raised about their concerns, the things they saw and practices that didn’t align with our values, but they weren’t listened to,” he adds. “Now we live or die by our own work. We’re not going to be reliant on other organisations. I would advise any other university with large franchise numbers to do the same.” Buckinghamshire cut ties earlier this year with five of its former private franchise partners.

Even so, other universities are continuing to explore franchise models. For Queen Mary’s new “International Year One” in business and management, for example, it will outsource the teaching and recruitment for the programme to Kaplan International College, a for-profit group offering pathway courses into higher education.

Taught at Kaplan’s centre in London Bridge, the one-year course will enable foreign students to move straight on to the second year of Queen Mary’s business management undergraduate degree. Kaplan’s tuition fee is about £9,000 cheaper and requires lower entry grades and English language qualifications. 

Queen Mary academics fear the Kaplan pathway, billed as the only one of its kind leading to a London Russell Group university, will not improve the academic preparedness of students.
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Managers should admit the funding model doesn't work and join in advocating for change, not push the pain and risk onto our most vulnerable students and change universities beyond recognition. Or making institutions beholden to agents, taking the future hostage. www.ft.com/content/3f49...


	Despite worries over the role of agents, a global survey of university leaders by Navitas and Nous Group shows 24 per cent will increase investment in agent commissions and incentives, but down from 30 per cent in 2022.

Margins will keep depleting, says Connolly. As student flows and fees become increasingly volatile, universities “will need to be able to say we tried everything”, he adds. “It means more vice-chancellors and senior people shaking hands with agents.”
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UCU University of Kent branch @ucukent.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
UK Universities desperately need support from our government. Education should be free for everyone. Education is not a business. Education is key for a strong economy. Education is important for everyone's life and well-being. #Solidarity with @uonucu.bsky.social
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
“£230bn saving” 🙄 If you issue your own currency, you don’t “fund” the NHS by shrinking the population - you need the real capacity. Migrants add tax, fill critical roles, and face limited benefits access. The constraint isn’t a debt figure; it’s having enough nurses, carers, teachers and builders.
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Aidan Fitzmaurice @fancyvegaspro.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Excellent piece on basic income for the arts by Mick Gallen. One of the most talented and hardest working artists I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Amazing to read what the scheme did for him. www.thejournal.ie/readme/opini...
thejournal.ie
The Basic Income scheme brought me success, wellbeing and family life; the Government must retain it
The pilot scheme has given artists a balance between working well and living well, writes Michael Gallen.
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leedsucu.bsky.social @leedsucu.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Really helpful post here about the upcoming ballot which you'll have seen an email about on Monday. #WeAreTheUniversity - vote yes to: ▶️protect jobs and prevent cuts ▶️defend the agreements that support our work ▶️demand a pay uplift.
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
It's welcome week and I'm on strike (again) over the University of Edinburgh's refusal to rule out compulsory redundancies. UoE has no deficit, but cuts of £90 million are already underway, damaging teaching, research, and the future of education at our university.
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Science Secretary Peter Kyle very clear today: 'too many universities are competing for the same pool of students'. He wants much more 'co-operation' (AKA merger) and unis narrowing down to their individual strengths. You have been warned. www.gov.uk/government/s...
gov.uk
Peter Kyle’s speech at UK Universities conference 2025
A speech delivered by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle, at UK Universities conference, Exeter on Thursday 4 September 2025.
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Reinier de Vries @reinierdevries.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
New preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We used molecular dynamics simulations and solid-state NMR (@fmp-berlin.de) to look at calcium binding to the pore domain of the calcium-gated K+ channel MthK. @wojciechkopec.bsky.social @compbiophys.bsky.social
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 18/08/2025
9 in 10 students are struggling to afford rent and food… Yet former universities minister Jo Johnson says it’s “perverse” to complain about tuition fee rises 😱 Read our report: tr.ee/wAdLcJ
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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH Director, thinks that if science isn’t popular it should be abandoned. “No matter how elegant the science, a platform that lacks credibility among the people it seeks to protect cannot fulfill its public health mission”. He is unfit for his job in every imaginable way.
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profserious @profserious.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Very few people seem to understand university finances and, distressingly, this includes many academics and most policymakers. This is an attempt to condense the key points you need to know. open.substack.com/pub/profseri...
open.substack.com
Understanding University Finances
... a very short guide
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Good read: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Tuition fees are rising again and nobody is happy – it’s time to actually fix our broken university sector | Zoe Williams
The figures simply don’t add up for higher education in England and Wales. Yet delusional politicians from all parties seem intent on avoiding the issue, says Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
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William Carruthers @williamcarruthers.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
The British university mess is so clearly what happens when the incentives of the people administering and consulting on the system bear no relation to those of anyone actually working in it
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
PhD studentship in London with 880 GBP monthly stipend. Dear Lord Almighty
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
now google each of those six universities and “redundancies”
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Or better still: remove the perverse incentive that makes universities throw all their money into marketing to try to grab a couple of student fees from other universities, and put in place some student number redistribution and planning. Then those fees could go to teaching & research, not Mammoth.
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Have I got my predictions right about the disaster in British Higher Ed? Take a look at this from 2023. As I've said to the Commons Education Committee, experts who've nailed it should now get a turn and replace Willetts and Osborne-style advisers who got it all wrong. www.ft.com/content/2f46...
ft.com
Britain’s university crisis is reaching a tipping point
Ministerial rhetoric about too many undergraduates ignores the real causes of the problem
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Bleddyn Bowen @bleddb.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Government and society can’t insist on the financial independence of universities and then complain in shock when strategic courses or departments are shuttered because they hurt the finances and no more public funding is forthcoming.
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Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · 18/07/2025
I still can’t believe that all NIH grants to my colleagues at Harvard and Harvard Medical School have been nullified. And that, as a nation, we’re somehow okay with this illegal, arbitrary, and petty act. Just think of the consequences: scientists, students, and patients will all suffer.
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Richard Carr @richardcarr.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Big employability has convinced a generation of decision makers/students that there’s a series of bitesize specific #lifehacks inherent in degree level study that they’ve added. But it’s always been about the journey of gaining competence/mastery of a subject and the things you develop along the way
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Ruth! @ruthholliday.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Interestingly *Research-led-teaching* seems to be precisely the thing that senior managers are targeting. Whether that’s by cutting programmes and making staff redundant, two-tier lectureships and teaching-only staff, or hollowed out, generic, team-taught modules.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
'“The primary challenge...is one of financial sustainability, compounded by a decade of declining public funding for our teaching and research, not one of widespread failures in governance.' (James Miller, Universities Scotland). 2ndary challenge: focus HE on what HEIs are actually for. (Me). 3/3
researchprofessionalnews.com
To save UK higher education, start talking about knowledge - Research Professional News
Until debate on universities foregrounds their core purposes, their woes will deepen, says Margot Finn
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
The Higher Education crisis is completely hollowing out so many universities. Their very nature is being erased. Yet it's hardly being talked about. www.leicester.news/the-lack-of-...
leicester.news
‘The lack of inspiration is tangible’: How staff redundancies are reshaping art at DMU
The ongoing job cuts at the university are changing the way students learn.
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Almost 2 years in the UK as a lecturer in chemistry. One of the biggest differences - students mindset. At 20-21 they keep talking about employability, careers, salaries and debt. Huuuuge difference compared to Europe were students seem more laid back and seem to explore different things in life
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21 Group @21group.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Deficit of £31.2 m is claimed by Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University as need for cuts But there's ample money to pay Shakespeare Martineau for legal services No cash for courses, but plenty for corporate lawyers Educational priorities, Cardiff-style www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun...
theguardian.com
British law firm coached universities on how to obtain sweeping protest bans
Revealed: Shakespeare Martineau LLP, which helped Cardiff get year-long ban on unauthorised action, promoted court orders at webinar
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
I’ve never heard people taking **so much** about “career” (in so many different contexts) before I moved to the UK (I assume it’s similar in the US)
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
The government response to this petition is infuriating. “Maternity and other types of Parental Pay are intended to provide a measure of financial security to support parents whilst they are away from the workplace; they are not a replacement of earnings” except they literally are??? Please sign:
petition.parliament.uk
Petition: Raise statutory maternity/paternity pay to match the National Living Wage
Statutory maternity and paternity pay is £4.99 per hour for a full-time worker on 37.5 hours per week - approximately 59% less than the 2024 National Living Wage of £12.21 per hour for workers aged 21...
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Immigrant’s life in the UK (18 months) >go to the bank >”you have to build your credit score!!” >”uff okay… how?” >”get out credit card!” >”okay…” >”your applications has been rejected bc you dont have credit score” ????
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Is asking grant applicants to supply an “independent” referee they've never worked with fair? IMHO it penalises early-career scientists & smaller labs while rewarding the well-connected.
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Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Opinion: “Perhaps what moved me most in Kyiv was meeting Ukrainian students, who spoke passionately about their dreams – not of escape, but of contribution. They want to become the engineers, doctors, teachers and leaders who will rebuild their nation.” ✍️ Charles Cormack #highered #EduSky
timeshighereducation.com
Ukraine will win the war in the lecture theatre as well as the battlefield
My trip to Kyiv revealed the unstoppable spirit of Ukrainian education even as Russia’s bombs continue to rain down, says Charles Cormack
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Philip Augar, who lead on the review of post-18 education and funding neatly summing up the failures of governance in #UKHE. Note how he links the problems directly to the lifting of the student number caps and the thoughtless scramble that inspired. #SaveHE
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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
STABLE FUNDING. The experiment of having the country's higher education and research reliant on the volatility of student fees, AND removing any predictability by removing the student number distribution clearly doesn't work.
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
scientists: we’re underfunded and overworked organizations: here’s a webinar how to improve your sleep for real
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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
The UK's paternity leave is the worst in Europe. It frustrates dads, burdens mums, and impoverishes us all. The fight for better parental leave is not just a demand for common decency, but for common sense. observer.co.uk/news/opinion...
observer.co.uk
Dads deserve a better paternity deal – so does the economy
New fathers who want to bond with their babies are treated in a derisory way in the UK – and that harms us all
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
UK HE be like: here is the marking scheme for the paper length (2500 +/-10% words). Consider these 5 marking criteria and calculate the weighted average. Note that for the first class the student would need to go above and beyond
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Wojciech Kopec @wojciechkopec.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
MscL channel opens up asymmetrically! Check out our latest story, spearheaded by my brilliant postdoc Olga pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
pubs.acs.org
Asymmetric Nature of MscL Opening Revealed by Molecular Dynamics Simulations
The bacterial mechanosensitive channel, MscL, opens in response to elevated membrane tension during osmotic shock. Some mutations, like L17A and V21A, can reduce the activation tension threshold, thus...
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