WHAT IS THE POINT of the British university? Not long ago this question would have been ridiculous: universities allow the expert to instruct the gifted, to the benefit of both the individual and society at large. Ask now, however, and you are greeted by laughter, or despair.
In the contemporary university, students pay handsomely for degrees in the confident expectation of Firsts or Upper-Seconds (82 per cent in 2021). Academics fired by political dogma foster like-minded activists under the guise of education.
Lecturers whose intellectual ambitions have never risen beyond the pages of “best practice” handbooks clone closed-minded functionaries for middle management. Wealthy dullards from credulous abroad pay eye-watering sums to carry off a “vanity Masters” to embellish gaps on their walls and CVs.
And a self-satisfied chorus of overpaid administrators clap like seals, drowning out the protests of dispirited academics and an increasingly bemused public. Whatever this is, it is not what universities were, and it begs the question: should the people
