I was flicking through the The Times's Good University Guide supplement recently. Mild interest rather than applying all over again! This year the LSE topped their rankings and so I dipped in to what it said about that establishment and happened upon the most encouraging things I've read about a British university in a long time.
Freedom of speech is top of their relatively new vice chancellor's agenda. There will be no "safe spaces", no trigger warnings on lectures and no books banned. A working group will consider how issues such as Islamophobia, antisemitism and transgender issues should be dealt with. All first year undergrads will have to take a compulsory inter-disciplinary module teaching students how to debate controversial issues.
"I say if you come here, expect to encounter ideas you hate, that bite, that go to your identity" said Larry Kramer. "If we are not doing that we are failing to prepare you for what will happen out there when you leave. We will give you the tools to help you engage".
I've been concerned about the proliferation of cancel culture in our universities for some time, with no-platforming of many speakers who can't possibly be considered to be extreme. But I'd been further sensitised to these issues after reading a column by Matt Goodwin, following his resignation from the University of Kent where he had been professor of politics and international relations for 9 years. Goodwin is an occasional columnist in the Times group newspapers so I wondered why he quit.
Goodwin was very clear that he had taken the opportunity of redundancy as universities struggle to balance their books. This is due to the nonsensical position of the tuition fees, set at £9,000 in 2012, having only been raised to £9,250 since making them worth less than £6,500 in today's money, leaving a number of universities on the brink of collapse.
Goodwin said there were a number of factors behind his desire to leave academia: factors which have "collided to erode the quality of higher education, betray students and make universities an unpleasant place to work". These factors include the dumbing down of standards, rampant grade inflation (with 56% of students now getting a first class degree); the "disastrous rise of on-line, or remote, learning which ... has killed attendance and intellectual life, undermining students' interpersonal and learning skills" and how universities have "replaced the things they used to prioritise - intellectual rigour, hard work, exposing students to debates and ideas, even ones they find disagreeable - with an obsessive focus on 'student satisfaction' ".
Goodwin went on to say, however, that the real reason he and many others are leaving academia is not because of finances or teaching, it is because the universities have become "openly political...highly activist ... imposing a dogmatic view on their academics and students, enforcing a narrow groupthink, silencing dissenters and eroding the things higher education is meant to promote - truth, reason, evidence and exposing their students to a full range of ideas and beliefs."
Strong stuff. Goodwin says universities have always leaned left. It was certainly the case when I was at uni in the early 1970s. I didn't have a problem with it as I would have been somewhat on the left myself at the time. The folk interested in politics - student or mainstream - were certainly very to the left but the majority (myself included) were much more interested in studying, partying, music and football. The profs and lecturers didn't appear to espouse any particular political ideology and concentrated on teaching.
But Goodwin says the ratio of left wing to right wing academics has spiralled since the 1960s from three to one to more like ten to one, producing an ideological monculture in which only a narrow set of ideas are allowed to dominate. He says this has resulted in a total obsession with viewing racial, sexual and gender minorities as sacred, wanting to transfer power and resources away from the majority to minorities and sacrificing anything that gets in the way of this "social justice".
By the time students reached Goodwin's third year course some would complain about how, until that point, they felt they had been politically indoctrinated.
From Goodwin's perspective it meant being told to "de-colonise" reading lists, taking part in anti-racism training which has been shown to be flawed, displaying gender pronouns (which he sees as a symbol of a "highly contested belief system") and working in a monoculture which was intolerant to those who hold different views.
Other academics have quit or been forced out, inlcuding Kathleen Stock, hounded out of her job as professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex by pro-trans activists. The group Academics for Academic Freedom lists nearly nearly 200 academics who have been sacked, harassed or disinvited from giving talks in recent years.
Goodwin's personal experience was that, having publicly suggested after the Brexit referendum that the democratic decision made by 52% of voters should be implemented, he was subjected to a sustained campaign of bullying, harrassment and intimidation with many left wing academics shutting him out.
As a result students "self censor" on campus, feeling unable to say what they think.
What I find scary is that this has happened while we had a Conservative government, albeit one that didn't know where the pitch was, let alone keep its eye on any balls.
Goodwin was part of a group of academics who helped design the Higher Education (Free Speech) Act, which creates a legal requirement for universities to promote and protect free speech and leaving them liable to fines if they are found to sack or harass academics because of their views. But Bridget Phillipson, Labour's Education Secretary, has said she will pause if not cancel this new law. Labour could do a lot of damage unpicking things like this and trade union legislation.
Goodwin is finished with universities but will continue to write books and his blog on Substack, a blogging platform that allows authors to charge subscriptions (no, I'm not planning to do that!)
I will try to keep an eye on what Goodwin is saying. I'm sure many of his students will miss his teaching and those who don't will miss the benefit of hearing their received wisdom challenged.
If they can be bothered to attend lectures at all. A column by an iconito lecturer revealed the problems universities face in getting students to turn up to be indoctrinated. If they aren't too stressed to attend they find work so stressful they say they can't cope, can't deal with more than one assignment at a time or avoid assignments that involve talking to people, preferring to email or text.
It seems there is an epidemic of students with self-diagnosed mental illnesses, mainly anxiety, which they blame for absences and needing extensions to deadlines. And it's not just university life: they have anxiety about being on time, booking doctor's appointments (ha, obviously deluded if they think they can get one of those!) and managing money.
A study of 11,000 students in six Russell Group unis since 2022 said 30% of students reported anxiety disorders. Many of these are not medically diagnosed. A King's College study found the number of students self-reporting mental health difficulties had nearly tripled between 2017 and 2023, from 6% to 16%. A 2022 survey by Student Minds, a mental health charity, said 57% of respondents reported a mental health issue, of which 24 per cent had a diagnosis. This would still mean a staggering 14% of their sample had such a diagnosis, though I'd expect their sample was skewed by people who just get on with things not responding to the survey.
The problem for lecturers is the onus is on them to accommodate this epidemic of real and imagined illness and they have a responsibility for following up with absent students to check they are ok. The Secret Lecturer claimed this sometimes meant checking up on 20 out of 30 students, rearranging courses in ways the students feel meet their needs. This might include adapting lessons so students can participate, providing course materials they can read in their own time and recording lectures or finding other ways of students being able to attend remotely.
Lecturers have to be careful what they say and wouldn't dare to challenge students or suggest work might be just the thing to distract them and provide a sense of purpose. Pushing students hard is risky - lecturers risk being investigated and some are reported to have been fired for being "too forceful".
I don't want to appear unsympathetic. One of the problems with this tidal wave of self reported issues is that it may conceal the smaller number of cases of students who are genuinely in difficulty and really do need help. But turning the normal struggles of life into a pathological condition isn't healthy. Mentally fragile students shouldn't put themselves through an experience they are unsuited to. Not everyone needs a degree, together with a debt of, on average, £45k.
That debt often proves to be a poor investment. The IFS has calculated a wide range of how the degree subject affects the discounted present value of lifetime earnings. Medicine, economics and maths were the most strongly positive. Many other subjects were marginal at best.
As for indoctrination, I would guess the issue arises more in arts and humanities faculties rather than in engineering courses like the one I did all those years ago, though the climate of wokery is no doubt present everywhere. To aid pain to suffering the creative arts subjects had a negative discounted present value in the IFS study. That means those students are expected to earn less over their lifetime - by up to £100,000 in present day money - than if they hadn't gone to uni. Go figure, as they say.
I guess my biggest concern is that many of our universities are still centres of world class excellence and are a huge asset to the country. But for how much longer, I wonder?
The Good University Guide was published by the Times on 22 September 2024.
Matt Goodwin's article Goupthink is strangling universities, count me out was in the Sunday Times on 15 September 2024
My students tell me they're too stressed to learn. I don't dare to challenge them, a column by 'The Secret Lecturer' was in the Sunday Times on 6 October 2024
The costs of studying for a degree and the IFS lifetime earnings data were reported in How much does uni cost and is it worth it? BBC website 17 September 2024
