Your summer HE reading recommendations, 2018

Every year we get lists of great summer reading suggestions from famous and not so famous authors in the weightier newspapers and even the Times Higher Education sometimes joins in. Last year we joined in the fun with this handy list of the #HigherEd books everyone should have read together with some broader helpful reading advice.

We could have asked a load of higher ed celebrities for their views but that would have taken far too long and we might not have liked the answers. So here, in all its purity, without any external input whatsoever, is this summer’s list…

• The Sorcerer’s Apprenticeship Levy
• When Two Two Becomes Two One: Grade Inflation Made Easy
• You Say Tom-ah-toe, I Say Tom-ay-toe: Graduation Name Reading for Beginners
• Snowflake Patrol: Policing Safe Spaces on Campus
• Alone in Berlin: Managing Exchange Students in Crisis
• War of the World Rankings
• The Office for Students, The First Six Months of Joy
• The Borrowers: University Librarians have their say
• Treasure Island: Remembering Second Life
• From JACS to HECoS: the magic of subject coding
• The Sign of Four Star: Sherlock Holmes and the REF
• To Kill the Mockingbirds: campus avian control strategies
• Paradise Lost: the impact of university capital investment
• Christmas Carols: A Definitive Guide to University Festive Event Arrangements
• The Spiked! Annual 2018 – the very best of this year’s wilful contrarianism with all your favourite pseudonymous writers.

My back pages

Some of those previously recommended here which have made the bestseller list over the past year already include:

• The Place of the Mace – identifying graduation paraphernalia
• I Spy Universities
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The hottest new graduate entry jobs
• UKRI or I cry, Bees or Baize? The definitive sector pronunciation guide – new HERA-compliant version
• The Essay Mill on the Floss
• Gold! Always Believe in Your TEF Score
• Bleak Houses: student accommodation through the ages
• I’ve Got a Brand New Combine Harvester – agricultural economics in the Archers
• Dalmatians 101: setting up puppy rooms in student services
• For Whom the Bell Tolls – universities and their clocktowers
• Registrars and their Registers
• The HE Student Loan Book (now available at a large discount)
• Getting titters on Twitter or how to craft the perfectly droll 140 character epigram – a primer for senior university managers
• Almost out of office – a guide to minimising tedious summer email
• How to dig “digs”: Understanding contemporary trends in student accommodation
• True Grime on Campus- the world’s best academic graffiti
• It Ain’t Half Hot Mum – cross-cultural sensitivities in setting up campuses overseas
• Yet More HE Acronyms (HERA edition)
• The Campus on the Hill: protecting your university against rising sea levels

And, of course, there is the biggest book released in the past 12 months, True Crime on Campus, which EVERYONE should be buying many copies of.

Do let us know if there are any we’ve missed.