The death throes of the university are upon us

The death of the university, first announced many decades ago, has been a slow process. But its death throes quickened this year, as external threats met institutions bereft of purpose.

Perhaps most significantly, the financial crisis in England’s higher-education sector is coming to a head. This is due, in the main, to inflation, tax changes and frozen student fees. But warped spending priorities and bloated bureaucracies have also contributed to the problems facing almost three-quarters of England’s universities. Additionally, the decision 10 years ago to lift the cap on student recruitment has benefitted more esteemed and popular institutions, while leaving many others struggling to recruit fee-paying students. The facts are stark. Forty per cent of higher-education institutions apparently only have enough money to cover a few months’ costs.

The thorough-going marketisation of higher education has also affected the quality of the education on offer. Many popular institutions have expanded by lowering standards. Indeed, entry requirements for international students, whose fees are uncapped, have virtually disappeared at some universities. Even the lecturers’ union has noted that the ability to speak English is being discarded in the dash for cash cows. One professor told the BBC that 70 per cent of his recent master’s students had inadequate English, making it difficult to teach anything but the basics. Now, after decades of growth, international recruitment has fallen this year, adding to the sector’s financial woes.

Universities’ response to the cash crisis reveals their deeper crisis of purpose. Up to 10,000 university jobs are reported to have been cut this year. Yet diversity, equity and inclusion teams seem to have been largely spared the axe. Instead, universities are cutting core academic disciplines. The University of Kent has closed its philosophy department, while Canterbury Christ Church University will no longer teach English literature – a university spokesperson described the course as ‘no longer viable in the current climate’.

Once, it would have been unthinkable for a university not to offer degrees in major branches of learning, such as literature or philosophy. These subjects were taught not because ‘the market’ made them ‘viable’, but because they contributed to our understanding of the word and what it means to be human. That they can now be so readily discarded speaks to an impoverished intellectual climate that universities themselves have helped to create.

Indeed, academic departments tend to see challenging works of literature or philosophy as a problem rather than a source of enlightenment. Just this year, the University of Nottingham’s literature department slapped a trigger warning on The Canterbury Tales to alert students to ‘expressions of Christian faith’. In total, universities now have trigger warnings on over 1,000 books, including work by Shakespeare and Dickens. If literature is really so dangerous, so ‘problematic’, then why should anyone bother to read it?

It turns out that many are not reading very much at all, even at elite institutions. This is not a problem confined to British universities, either. Harvard has been lambasted by a current student for the fact that some of its arts and humanities courses do not require participants to read a single complete novel. An Oxford professor echoed these concerns, claiming ‘literature students once read three books a week but now manage only one every three weeks’.

The rot at the heart of universities in the West goes beyond expecting very little of students. It also shows up in the politicised nature of what they are asked to do. Engineering students at King’s College London complained after they were set the task of creating ‘a product for LGBTQ+ people focussed on providing education or safe spaces’. Students, not unreasonably, questioned what relevance this task had to engineering, and why it was worth 70 per cent of their module grade. Previous cohorts of engineering students apparently got to build a Mars rover.

Another insight into the politicised nature of higher education came when the thesis topic of an unfortunate PhD student at Cambridge went viral on social media. Ally Louks’s research into ‘Olfactory Ethics’ – essentially, linking descriptions of bad smells to prejudice and oppression – prompted a ferocious backlash. But, as one shrewd observer noted, on many undergraduate courses ‘the study of structural oppression in its various forms is the degree, and primary texts and historical context and linguistic and subject knowledge become “nice-to-haves”’.

Academia’s obsession with exposing structural racism has a blind spot for anti-Semitism, however. This year kicked off with the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, following her Supreme Court testimony in response to the rise of campus anti-Semitism. Her legalistic defence of students calling for the genocide of Jews made her position untenable. But British universities have also witnessed an alarming rise in anti-Semitism this year. Jewish students were pelted with eggs after an event with the chief rabbi, and swastika graffiti was found in lavatories at the National Union of Students conference.

Yet here, too, university managers struggle to get a grip on the problem. Jew hatred is a feature, not a bug, of politicised humanities departments, obsessed as they are with ‘decolonisation’ and critical race theory. One lecturer has described how student essays openly comparing Jews to ‘scurrying vermin’ and accusing them of being ‘complicit in genocide’ were not critiqued but praised and rewarded with high marks by her colleagues.

Clearly, not all academics share such views. The problem is that far too many who disagree choose to stay silent. A recent global survey suggests that around 70 per cent of academics are self-censoring out of ‘concern about the impact of students being offended’ and ‘the fear of upsetting colleagues’.

Let’s hope that, in 2025, professors find it within themselves to get a bit braver. Of course, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, passed under the previous Conservative government, could have helped with this. But in July, Labour’s new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, announced via social media that the current government will not implement the legislation.

Cowardly professors send the wrong message to students, too many of whom already seem only too willing to embrace cancel culture. Take the recent experience of Leeds University student Connie Shaw. She was suspended from her role volunteering at her university radio station after fellow students complained about her gender-critical views.

Next year will be tough for higher education. But universities brought many of the problems they now face down on their own heads. By abandoning academic rigour, the transmission and pursuit of knowledge and the preservation of cultural heritage, they have been left with little defence against budget cuts, falling student numbers and increased costs. Yet universities limp on, sucking up bright students and critically minded lecturers – young people eager to learn and academics keen to teach interesting and engaging content. Here’s hoping that, in 2025, their voices come to be heard more loudly.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.