Latest / UK Column Radio / Universities Are in Crisis — with Prof Gloria Moss (Part 1 of 3)

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Universities Are in Crisis — with Prof Gloria Moss (Part 1 of 3) · UK Column Radio

0:07
Hello everyone, this is Diane Rasmussen Mccaddy with UK column
0:10
News. I'm really happy today to be
0:12
joined by Professor Gloria Moss for what is going to be a very
0:16
important and hopefully interesting and revealing
0:19
discussion about the nature of universities in the UK as they
0:24
exist now in modern times. I've been working with Professor
0:28
Moss on a number of issues recently, including what's going
0:32
on in libraries with the children's books.
0:34
She's written a fabulous article for us recently for UK column
0:38
about the Fabians, and she's now doing a three-part series for us
0:42
on the idea of post truth in our society.
0:44
But today we're going to be focusing on universities.
0:48
So again, Gloria, welcome to UK column.
0:51
Do you want to maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and
0:53
your background and how you relate to the topic of
0:56
universities? Yeah, great to be back, Diane.
1:00
And in terms of myself, I'm a bit of a hybrid because I spent
1:06
some of my career in industry as a training person.
1:11
I've got an HR background, organizational psychology,
1:15
Improving organisations and the quality of the culture in
1:20
organisations has been a big priority in that part of my
1:24
life. And then I moved on to academia
1:29
in order to actually investigate cognitive sex differences.
1:34
Yeah, I did that at a time when the talk about androgyny was
1:39
looming on the horizon and I'd made a discovery and was very
1:43
keen to get that discovery which counted androgyny counted, the
1:48
whole notion that you can actually change your sex.
1:53
I was very keen to get that research through peer review.
1:57
And I, I did that and, and then I moved on to, to doing research
2:04
on this, this abiding interest of mine, healthy organisations,
2:10
how to turn toxic organisations into healthy ones.
2:14
And I focused on leadership and best practice leadership.
2:19
And all of that was in a mainstream British university.
2:25
And after I became a professor, I had more time to do this
2:32
research. I've written 80 peer reviewed
2:36
journal articles and conference papers and eight books.
2:42
After 2019, the university system, such as it was, was, was
2:51
didn't provide the hospitable environment in which I could
2:56
continue that work. So I now work independently.
3:00
I work as an independent researcher, but I know the
3:05
university system very well because I worked in it, the
3:09
mainstream university system, for many years.
3:13
And what we're going to do today is talk about what, what is that
3:17
like that university system and is it fit for purpose?
3:22
You worked in the university system, Diane, and you're now
3:26
outside that system. Yes, absolutely.
3:29
It's really changed quite a bit and what for me seems like a
3:34
relatively short amount of time. When I started my PhD in went
3:40
through kind of the process of what was, you know, going
3:44
through the promotion process over 20 years and eventually
3:47
reaching full professor. I would say that when I started
3:50
my PhD, which was 2002 and finished in 2006 and got the
3:59
title of full professor starting in 2023 and then I was shortly
4:03
after. We're a race for my profession
4:05
for doing what I thought was what professors were supposed to
4:08
do, which is to question things. That's what I was taught I was
4:12
supposed to be doing when as a professor, especially as what I
4:16
achieved to be, you know, the intellectual top of my field in
4:20
terms of leadership and, and education and research.
4:24
And like you built a very large CV around my topic in
4:29
informatics and libraries. And it really just changed quite
4:34
a bit from when I got into the system in the beginning, which
4:37
of course started in America and then I worked in Canada and then
4:41
came to the UK to work in 2015. In the very beginning, it was
4:45
sort of like find the questions that you want to ask.
4:49
You have the right to ask those questions and it's your
4:51
responsibility to to use the data that you gather to answer
4:56
those questions. But it just even, I think even
5:00
in the past few years for me and maybe you have a different
5:02
perspective that changed quite significantly just in those
5:06
twenty years. So I guess it would be helpful
5:10
for our viewers to hear a little bit about the background of
5:13
university, since we're kind of talking about the the modern
5:16
crisis university. So if you want to maybe go into
5:19
some of the background and the history of universities, I think
5:22
that would be helpful to start the conversation.
5:25
Yes, because as you say, even in, in in your lifetime, you've
5:29
seen major change. And if we look at the span of
5:32
history, then my goodness, there's major change.
5:35
And some of this is, is detailed in this book published by Truth
5:41
University Press entitled The Dark Side of Academia, How Truth
5:46
is Suppressed. And that's written by the Secret
5:50
professor. And there's a foreword from John
5:53
Hammer and then afterward from Doctor Tess Laurie.
5:57
So there you can read about the history of universities.
6:01
They they actually go back to 1088.
6:05
Bologna has the crown and students and teachers, quite
6:12
simple really would come together.
6:15
And that is where the the word university comes from, that the
6:20
title of these organisations was in Latin Universitas Scholarium
6:28
A, a, a group of scholars and teachers.
6:34
And they were small groups. They were not the massive
6:39
edifices that you think of today, not at all.
6:43
And Oxford followed in quick succession in 1096.
6:48
Paris 11:50 And the rest is history, shall we say.
6:53
Originally those groups of scholars, well the scholars were
6:58
foreign nationals actually in in those cities.
7:01
And would you believe it, the scholars, the students would
7:05
actually decide the academics salaries.
7:08
My goodness, how, how that's changed today as we see vice
7:12
chancellors on stratospheric salaries.
7:17
So the beginning was way back in the 11th century and thinking on
7:25
universities of course, changed, you know, from from the original
7:31
Universita Scholarium at Magisterium, groups of scholars
7:35
and teachers, thinking changed. And when we reached the 18th,
7:40
19th century, an important figure von Humboldt in Germany,
7:47
he conceived of universities as a place for the cultivation of
7:53
the mind and character. And he saw university work as
8:00
being rooted in principles of neutrality and freedom from
8:07
ideological and private interests.
8:10
And maybe those listening to our conversation would think that is
8:14
how universities remain as sort of neutral beacons of
8:19
enlightenment. Well, we'll, we'll find out
8:23
whether this is the case or not. But Humbok wasn't a lone voice,
8:29
shall we say? We could mention others, but I'd
8:32
like to single out a remarkable president of the University of
8:37
Chicago. He was actually the 7th
8:40
president, George Beadle. We're talking 1950s now.
8:44
He spoke about the importance of the quest for truth.
8:50
He was a high flying geneticist. He'd actually shared a Nobel
8:54
Prize in 1958 for his research into the role of genes in
9:00
regulating biochemical events within cells.
9:05
Listen to what this fine mind said, he said.
9:10
Quotes We 1 cannot search for truth with a closed mind or
9:15
without without the right to question or doubt at every
9:19
stage. Any injunction to close the
9:23
mind, to restrict one's beliefs arbitrarily or to accept on
9:29
authority without doubt violates the concepts of freedom of the
9:35
mind. And many of you will say that
9:41
this is your ideal of a university as well.
9:46
And many will say possibly that actually now we've come a very
9:51
long way away from the vision of Humboldt and of George Eagle.
9:58
And this is what Diana and I are going to look at today.
10:03
Have we moved away? And if we have moved away from
10:07
the striking visions, what are the factors that are to blame?
10:14
But I think we have to start with the subject of funding,
10:20
which many might say is at the root of the changes that Diane
10:26
mentioned earlier in her own career and the changes that
10:29
we've seen since the Universities of Humboldt.
10:33
And George Beadle. We all know the phrase he who
10:37
pays the piper calls the tune and you'll see in a graphic,
10:44
you'll see it very clearly what's been happening where
10:47
funding of British universities is concerned, and it will be a
10:51
similar story in many other countries as well.
10:54
What you'll see is a dramatic decline in government funding to
11:02
British universities. We see that between the years
11:05
2010 and 2022 to 3. These are figures from the
11:12
Commons library in parliament that government funding to
11:16
universities fell listen to this from £16 billion to just £4
11:23
billion over that period of a little more than 10 years.
11:28
So the reality now is that government monies for teaching
11:32
in universities has reduced by a massive 75% and the budget for
11:41
teaching is now quarter what it was and reducing.
11:45
And government monies for research have reduced by the
11:50
same amount, 75% and have fallen from a high of £10 billion.
11:56
Now I'm not saying that government funding is
11:58
necessarily all fine and dandy, because of course government
12:03
funding, when I've looked at calls for research put out by
12:10
the research councils of Britain and other countries, that those
12:16
calls for research inviting academics to apply for
12:20
government monies, as you might have predicted, they're
12:24
following very much mainstream agendas.
12:28
Example the Economics and Social Science Research Council, ESRC,
12:34
they've funded these projects in the past, learning to like
12:38
robots, attracting international students who pay more fees than
12:44
national ones, how to attract them to the UK.
12:48
So we're not saying that government funding for research
12:52
is necessarily the panacea, but what we can say with certainty
12:57
is that now it the the volume of funding has dropped so
13:02
dramatically, the short form has been made-up by private funding.
13:09
This is a table showing the monies going to universities
13:16
from two of the biggest funders of universities today worldwide.
13:21
And yeah, you've probably guessed it, it's the Bill and
13:24
Melinda Gates Foundation and it's the Welcome Trust.
13:28
The Welcome Trust has has a massive £16 billion in its
13:36
coffers to offer to universities in the decade leading up to
13:40
2032. So how is this money being
13:45
spent? Well, if you look at the table,
13:48
you can see the Gates fund totalled a massive 11 billion, I
13:57
mean slightly less than the Welcome, but still very large,
14:00
which was offered to O471 universities worldwide in 66
14:09
countries. So you can see the impact that
14:14
Bill Gates funding is happening on universities worldwide.
14:20
Looking at Britain, Oxford was the biggest beneficiary of Gates
14:24
funding receiving a whopping $375 million over a four year
14:31
period, 2014 to 18. And as we move on in time,
14:39
Oxford received almost 10 million power, $1,000,000 for
14:45
research on vaccines in 2020, another almost $11 million for
14:56
improving understanding of COVID and creating a what they call
15:05
therapeutic accelerator. And the Welcome Trust Co funded
15:10
that project. That last project, Cambridge has
15:15
also received Gates funding, not to the same amount as Oxford,
15:21
but but some of the money that they've received, they used to
15:25
fund GATE, what they call Gates scholars.
15:29
So we can kind of second guess the kind of research that those
15:34
Gates scholars might be doing. And note that Gates received,
15:41
even though he never completed his first degree, he received an
15:44
honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.
15:49
It always helps to have friends in high places, does it not,
15:53
Diane? And and we mustn't forget
15:58
Imperial, Who led the Clarion call during COVID times.
16:05
They received a massive $185 million from the Bill Gates
16:11
Foundation and 140,000 for modelling COVID.
16:19
And that was the model Ferguson, Professor Ferguson behind that
16:23
one that predicted 500,000 deaths, computer model which has
16:29
been which has been widely critiqued.
16:34
UCL University College London, high-ranking University 2019.
16:40
They received what close to $11 million for their research on
16:46
vaccines. Southampton University likewise
16:49
smaller sum, but for research on vaccines.
16:53
And, well, I didn't want to crowd out the table, but you
16:57
know, the theme continues. University of Exeter received
17:01
funding for examining the potential for BCG vaccination to
17:08
reduce the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare.
17:11
Workers at Warwick University received nearly $14 million for
17:17
research, pressing the danger of variants.
17:21
So the universities were standing tall, shall we say,
17:26
behind the COVID narrative. And many of you will have heard
17:30
Bill Gates telling the world that if you invest in vaccines,
17:37
then you have a 20 to 1 return on your investments turning $10
17:42
billion into $200 billion. And here we have the
17:47
university's complicit in this, courtesy of Bill Gates funding.
17:54
I don't know what you think of this DIA.
17:57
Yeah, I guess I would add to that Gloria as well that it's,
17:59
it's not just Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Welcome Trust,
18:02
which are obviously major funders, but it's also the also
18:05
the people who support the the research in terms of what needs
18:10
to happen in publications. Because obviously your research
18:14
gets funded based on a certain agenda.
18:16
And then if your research doesn't align with the
18:19
sustainable development Goals, for example, which you have to
18:22
indicate when you upload your research nowadays into
18:25
university systems, when your articles or your books get
18:28
published, then you're not actually able to put them into
18:31
the system. So if you haven't met SDG 7 or
18:33
13 or whichever 1 you think can relate to your research, then
18:38
the university doesn't want to even to see that you've you've
18:41
had it published. So that all of course relates to
18:45
the funding because if you can't get it published and you don't
18:48
have any reason to get the funding.
18:49
And so it all has to work together.
18:52
So I think this then goes into, I guess the next issue of peer
18:57
review, right? So we all know potentially that
19:01
well, we know as academics that peer review has to happen to
19:05
make sure that supposedly it's reviewed by experts to me before
19:09
it gets published. But there are some issues of
19:13
corruption going on as well, I would say within peer review.
19:16
So I'll let you talk a little bit more about that.
19:19
Peer review is an absolute critical part of the academic
19:23
system, if not the linchpin of the whole system created by
19:28
Robert Maxwell in 1951. Yep, peer review didn't exist
19:34
before then with arguably highly questionable funding kick
19:40
starting the whole thing. And if you'd like to read more
19:42
about that, I published an article.
19:44
It's published on Principia Scientific website.
19:48
Just just Google my name and Robert Maxwell and you'll see
19:53
some information on this highly questionable funding.
19:56
And I suppose there are two big problems with peer review.
20:02
And I say that as somebody who's had, you know, sort of up to 80
20:06
articles through peer review and I've acted as a reviewer on
20:11
editorial boards myself. But the two big problems really
20:17
are firstly, the very conservative nature of academic
20:22
journals. Conservative is a is a rather
20:25
kind. Word 2 articles in a highly
20:29
ranked journal have actually pointed this out.
20:33
Very fascinating this the the The journal is the Proceedings
20:37
of the National Academy of Sciences and the two articles
20:41
were published in 2021 and then again in 2024.
20:48
And the first of those articles in P Nas concluded that
20:53
innovative papers were more likely to be rejected and less
20:58
innovative articles. And the second article from 2024
21:04
in the same journal highlighted the fact that 3 elite medical
21:10
journals had desk rejected 12 of the 14 articles that had become
21:18
the most popular in their field. In other words, elite journals,
21:23
the top journals that academics in top institutions are
21:28
encouraged, black bludgeoned, you might say, to to publish in.
21:33
Are there not really to publish innovative work, but less
21:38
innovative work. And if I refer you to Kuhn, The
21:45
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Absolutely a
21:50
crucial book from the 1970s, Coon said that most research
21:55
done in universities is what he calls normal research, tinkering
22:00
around the edges of a paradigm. And Coon says that the system is
22:04
not really set up at all to shift paradigms.
22:08
It's just there to maintain existing paradigms.
22:11
And so it is with with mainstream journals.
22:16
So that's one problem. They're not geared up to to
22:20
being innovative at all. The second problem is the fact
22:25
that the whole process of selecting articles for peer
22:28
review publication is highly questionable and we haven't got
22:35
very long today. But if I just flag up three
22:37
issues, First is the arbitrary nature of the whole process of
22:43
peer review. And you don't need to take my
22:46
word for that. We've had editors in chief chief
22:50
like Robbie Fox from the British Medical Journal and Richard
22:54
Horton from another medical journal, this time The Lancet,
22:59
both vouching for the arbitrary nature whereby articles get
23:05
selected. Robbie Fox obviously had a sense
23:07
of humour, he said. How do we know that if you don't
23:10
throw a pile of articles down the stairs that we just publish
23:14
those that reach the bottom? And Richard Horton obviously
23:20
likes language. His his his his description of
23:24
the peer review process. He describes it as biased,
23:28
unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, and frequently
23:34
wrong. So you get their point.
23:37
Not only that, but these journals very often have their
23:42
own agendas and, and the best way of illustrating that is with
23:46
reference to something that Richard Horton, editor in chief,
23:50
The Lancet, said back in 2020, which was that we need to, he
23:56
said, reinvent the scientific journal so that it becomes more
24:01
activist. Yeah.
24:04
He's saying the journal should be selecting articles to fit
24:08
certain themes. And separately from that, he
24:11
said the journals need to Picking up on what Diane told us
24:15
just then, the journals need to follow United Nations
24:20
sustainability, sustainable development goals.
24:25
And the final problem, problem I'd like to draw your attention
24:29
to, which you may be less aware of, I don't know, is the problem
24:33
of plagiarism. Yep, it's been found that
24:37
several academics, many of them extremely senior, have been
24:44
guilty of the cardinal sin of plagiarism.
24:48
And if you look at the next table, you'll see some of the
24:51
main offenders noted down. So we've got institutions on the
24:56
left. Harvard, the number one
25:00
university in the US, their their fifth highest paid
25:05
professor, Francesca Gino, whose research topic was honesty and
25:10
ethical behaviour was found to have falsified her data sets.
25:16
She's no longer employed by Harvard University and
25:21
Stamford's high up the pecking order in American universities.
25:25
The president no less, Mark Tessier Levine.
25:29
He had to resign in 2023 since he hadn't corrected errors
25:34
pointed out to him by the Journal and Harvard again their
25:40
Cancer Institute that at the Darna Farber Cancer Institute
25:44
has, I think this is still being investigated, the amount of the
25:49
use, extensive use of AI in papers that they've been putting
25:53
out and other misdemeanors. So all is not well in peer
26:00
review, which is the linchpin. And it's the linchpin largely
26:05
because academic promotion recruitment is is very much
26:13
dependent on the number of journal articles that you have
26:18
to your credit. And every seven or eight years
26:24
in Britain, universities are subjected to a massive research
26:29
assessment exercise in which the academic and peer review outputs
26:35
are are the main barometer, shall we say, of a university's
26:40
research excellence. Well, that's what they say.
26:44
And so can't stress too highly the importance, the important
26:49
place that peer review occupies in academia.
26:53
And if the system itself is open to abuse in the way that we've
26:58
said, you might question the very value of the academic
27:04
system in which that is placed. Third factor that might be
27:09
moving us away from the worthy ideals of George Beadle and
27:12
Humboldt. And that's the global focus that
27:15
we find in universities today. And there's another slide here
27:21
that illustrates this. The World Economic Forum, would
27:25
you believe, has grouped universities under its umbrella.
27:30
And this grouping of universities has called the
27:34
Global Universities Leaders Forum Gulf and well, you could
27:40
guess, I'm sure the universities that are members of Gulf, the
27:43
so-called top universities in Britain, America and elsewhere.
27:48
What can we say when universities are captured by the
27:55
World Economic Forum? And it's insidious in Nvidia's
28:01
agendas. And not just that, but you can
28:05
find on the WF website an article written by a then very
28:09
senior Oxford academic Pro Vice Chancellor, External Affairs
28:14
co-authored by a professor at Queensland.
28:17
And this is 2020. I'm quoting from this book, The
28:23
Dark Side of Academia, page 149, just a very short extract from
28:29
these two professors article talking about the place of
28:35
teaching and research in universities.
28:37
They say that through their engagement, teaching and
28:40
research, universities must redouble their efforts to work
28:45
alongside corporations, governments and NGOs as they
28:49
search for new business models and policies to assist the Great
28:55
Reset. Well, we could really stop
28:58
there, couldn't we? With those three factors, we're
29:02
seeing the university system captured by private funding and
29:08
by global agendas. And we've reached a point where
29:12
you may have read about this. Last year, a lecturer at
29:17
University College London was removed from her module
29:21
leadership following complaints from Chinese students.
29:27
We make up now 25% of the student body at University
29:32
College London and they contribute not the 9000
29:35
something pounds that domestic students contribute, but a but a
29:40
weighty 40,000 lbs apiece. And the.
29:45
The crime of the lecturer it was to highlight data from the
29:50
Global Slavery Index, which suggested that China had the
29:55
second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.
29:58
And she was also labeled anti Chinese after catching 2 Chinese
30:04
students cheating in an exam. And her head of department at
30:10
University College London said It said that the university
30:14
needed to retain a good reputation among future Chinese
30:19
applications. So where is this taking us?
30:23
That's a good question. If I could just add in there as
30:26
well. I think my most recent
30:30
university experience is a little bit more recent than
30:33
yours since you left the system. And I would say that even
30:37
especially since 2020, there's been a major increase the number
30:43
of international students. And, and I think part of this
30:47
might be due to the funding issues that we're talking about
30:51
because to be attending a university, US university
30:57
university where in the West because of the amount that they
31:01
pay. And the other issue with that is
31:04
that the quality is going down of our graduates because a lot
31:09
of them are not as qualified to be there as they should be in
31:12
terms of their language requirements and in terms of
31:15
their preparation for high level academic work.
31:20
And so we get the money coming in, but we don't, we don't,
31:23
we're not creating good graduates.
31:25
So then actually what happens is that the entire system erodes
31:29
because we're not producing good research.
31:32
And the research that we are producing is trying to meet the
31:34
needs of the, the globalist demands that are placed on us
31:38
to, to meet the sustainable development goals or, or make
31:42
the World Economic Forum happy with us.
31:44
And then you, you lose the whole point of why you're doing this
31:48
work in the first place, which leads to our next point here,
31:53
which is academic freedom, right?
31:56
So one of the reasons that I lost my position in the system,
32:00
not that I'm sad about it anymore, but because I have this
32:04
wonderful platform now with UK column and I'm more than happy
32:07
to be here. But the issue that, but the
32:10
problem that is actually happening is that academic
32:14
freedom in general is just going along with us.
32:17
We cover frequently on UK column issues of freedom of speech,
32:21
issues of, you know, what we're allowed to say and not say in
32:24
this entire society where it's one of those things supposed to
32:28
be very well protected in a university system.
32:32
And one of the things I got in trouble for, for example, was
32:36
talking about, just like you did, issues of sex and gender,
32:41
the issues of not putting pornographic material in front
32:44
of children and libraries, which is obviously very important to
32:47
me, which I've covered extensively.
32:50
The problem is that one of the things that we've seen recently
32:53
that one of our UK column authors has uncovered, Hugh
32:57
McCarthy, is that the the UN and the World Health Organization,
33:02
for example, believe that children should be treated as
33:06
sexual beings from birth. And that's now in globalist
33:09
policy. So if I speak out and say we
33:12
shouldn't be putting sex manuals in front of 6 year olds, that's
33:16
actually going against globalist policy, which is then funding
33:19
the university. So it's all in a big circle that
33:22
you can't get out of what you try to expose.
33:24
What's going on? So if you want to say anything
33:27
else about academic freedom, that that's just been one
33:30
example of what's happened to me, but I know it's happened to
33:34
a lot of others as well for for speaking out on different
33:37
issues. Well, exactly.
33:40
And I put a table together just highlighting some of the
33:44
academics who've been censored, ranging from Julie Poness,
33:49
Professor Julie Ponessen from the largest universities in
33:52
Canada. She refused to take the vaccine.
33:57
She was a professor of ethics. Do you believe it?
33:59
And she insisted on informed consent, as she should.
34:02
And she lost her job. And here in Britain, Professor
34:07
Chris Exley from Keele University, his focus was on the
34:12
harms of aluminium, including in vaccines, not exclusively in
34:16
vaccines. And life became extremely
34:18
difficult for Professor Exley. And then in in America, Mark
34:26
Tikrzynski, molecular immunologist and actually
34:30
president at the time of Thomas Jefferson University, his crime
34:36
was liking a number of tweets that questioned the COVID
34:40
treatments, questioned what you were talking about there, Diane.
34:45
I think gender reassignment, big pharma.
34:48
And so he lost his job. And there is an irony there
34:51
because Thomas Jefferson himself talked, actually said, that
34:56
people cannot be safe without information.
35:00
And then there's the case of Professor Eve, whose story is
35:05
described in this book here, Professor of management and
35:09
marketing, whose work on best practice leadership was not
35:16
encouraged by her at university. In fact, she had a Commission to
35:21
write an article, one of the leading newspapers on education
35:24
in the world, and the university told her that she was not to
35:28
send that article on best practices leadership out.
35:33
It subsequently came to light in an e-mail that that that article
35:41
could have caused, in the view of the senior people of that
35:44
university, could have caused people to question the
35:47
leadership style and effectiveness of vice
35:50
chancellors Who we will get to this in a little bit, operate a
35:56
very, very top down leadership style.
35:59
I would say from my own background in organizational
36:03
psychology that this is worst practice leadership.
36:07
But a bit like you were saying down it, it does seem to be a
36:11
style, this very controlling style of leadership that is
36:14
being promoted by those pulling the strings.
36:19
So the Rockefeller Foundation produced a report in 2010
36:25
entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and
36:29
International Development, and it was, yeah, it was engaged in
36:33
a number of scenario plans. What that report of Rockefeller
36:40
predicted was a world of tighter top down government control, a
36:46
world of more authoritarian leadership because the report
36:51
says limited innovation was needed from the populations of
36:57
the world. So a professor, Professor E, who
37:02
promotes a very different type of leadership is not going to
37:07
find a natural home in a mainstream university.
37:15
So we're talking about the cancellation not just of people
37:19
who threaten the medical system or mainstream science, but
37:25
people who threaten the system for control that operates an art
37:30
in our world today. And according to somebody I
37:35
know, you know Diane Dennis Hayes, and this is the next
37:40
table, Professor emeritus now of education, He was at Derby
37:44
University. Universities cannot really be
37:47
said to be universities unless they allow unrestricted freedom
37:53
of speech. And quite how restricted
37:57
speeches is difficult to get a handle on.
38:00
But there was a unique moment in 2018 when a magazine Spiked
38:07
produced undertook a survey on free speech in universities and
38:13
you can see what they found on that table.
38:16
Quite shocking. This was a few years ago, it's
38:19
probably worse now. They found that 55% of
38:22
universities actively censor speech, 39% stifle speech
38:28
through excessive regulation, and the shocking conclusion was
38:34
that just 6% of universities are truly free, open places.
38:41
I guess I would add in in there as well that I've been covering
38:44
on UK column the issue of the the current act that was passed
38:48
in 2023 that was meant to protect freedom of speech and
38:52
academic freedom and higher education.
38:55
When Bridget Phillipson first came into office as education
38:58
secretary last year, she halted it, saying, well, there's
39:02
potential and anti-Semitism and, and all these other things that
39:06
she was bringing in, saying that we needed to look at it to make
39:09
sure that there was no harm being done.
39:11
And it's now going through as of the 1st of August.
39:16
The Office of Students, Office for Students has provided some
39:19
guidance on how to do this. And unfortunately they've taken
39:25
away the tort reform that was going to be in there because you
39:28
can no longer sue for having your rights violated financially
39:33
because universities don't have the money to pay for it.
39:36
Think it was the University of Exeter recently that got fined.
39:39
It was 575,000 lbs for not following the academic freedom
39:44
principles for somebody. And I've I've also got an
39:48
interview with Professor Dennis Hayes on UK column, which
39:50
viewers can find if they want to get the full idea of academic
39:54
freedom from his perspective as well as representative from the
39:58
students for academics for academic freedom, which I did
40:01
late last year in 2024. So we can you can look at those
40:05
for more detail. The issues for students is that
40:11
there's the decolonization agenda.
40:15
Which is also very dangerous for protecting basically the British
40:20
system of knowledge, all of the history in this country and in
40:25
any Western country where they're pushing this
40:27
decolonization agenda. So do you, do you want to talk
40:30
about that a little bit? As as we speak, libraries are
40:36
decolonizing the books in the in those libraries.
40:42
Exeter University. If you want to see what's going
40:45
on, look no further than Exeter and the West Country.
40:48
They have a reading group discussing liberating the
40:52
library, what it means to decolonize, and well, you you
40:57
explained, I think I am that that often means removing books
41:02
written by Caucasians if you want to.
41:06
Learn more Sorry, I'm going to hold this up for the viewers.
41:08
This book called Narrative Expansion tell us exactly how
41:13
this is being done, interpreting decolonization and academic
41:17
libraries. This is this is published by
41:19
SILLIP, which is my former professional body for library
41:23
and information professionals in the UK, tells exactly how
41:27
they're doing it. And this is also happening not
41:31
just for libraries, but for curriculum as well.
41:36
A lot of subjects, probably all of the subjects now have
41:40
guidance and within their own universities of their own
41:43
professional bodies on how to decolonize the curriculum.
41:46
Which again, people are seeing that textbooks that they've used
41:51
for years for their students or for their research, like
41:53
disappearing from the library catalogs and from the the
41:57
collections because they were written by white people or
42:01
straight men or whatever the offense of the moment is.
42:05
And they're putting in this critical race theory.
42:08
We're also seeing that exams are being considered racist because
42:12
they are somehow a problem for people who didn't grow up in the
42:16
British system of education. So we are disadvantaging these
42:20
international students who are coming here and paying £40,000 a
42:23
year to get a British education. So we see a lot of things
42:28
happening around the academic freedom, but also this is also
42:34
causing our students to have problems because they can no
42:37
longer apparently handle hearing certain curriculum points.
42:41
If it sounds too white or it's too offensive, then they get
42:45
triggered and they have safe spaces that they're allowed to
42:48
go to and and experience therapy dogs so that they can calm down
42:52
and get a cup of tea. And I've covered this as well
42:55
and on new segments, but I think that actually all does tie into
42:58
academic freedom because students are just no longer able
43:01
to handle it because they're coming in with expectations with
43:04
mental health issues with however they were affected
43:07
during the lock UPS that we went through in 2020 and 2021.
43:12
So there's a lot of things going on there.
43:14
And I think that leads us to our next point, which is declining
43:18
academic standards, if you want to go into that next.
43:22
It does very much look as though there's a massive decline in the
43:29
standards of marking that contribute to the degree
43:35
classification that students come away with.
43:38
And I've put together a table so that showing this isn't a matter
43:42
of opinion, this is very much a matter of fact.
43:47
I focused here on on the British situation.
43:51
So back in the year 1970, a first class degree were very
43:56
rarely awarded. If you were at Warwick
44:00
University, it was awarded to just 6% of the cohort.
44:04
Bath University, very similar, 8%, Cambridge slightly higher,
44:09
but we're well under the 15% mark.
44:12
Fast forward to the 1990s in Certainly that's the time that
44:16
Tony Blair introduced tuition fees towards the end of the
44:21
1990s and the average. Before the tuition fees was
44:27
introduced, the average proportion of students who were
44:30
awarded a first class degree was just 7%.
44:35
Then we get the advent of tuition fees and things start to
44:39
change. 2009 to 2010, these are average averages across Britain.
44:48
15% of students get first class degrees.
44:52
You can see the numbers, it's edging up all the time. 18% by
44:57
2000 and 1819 have reached 28 percent. 2000 and 1920 massive
45:06
increase up to 35% and by 2020-2021 it has reached 37
45:16
percent 3030 times higher than it had been in the in in the
45:22
1970s. In fact, the years before
45:25
tuition fees were introduced and what perhaps is not surprising
45:31
because these days universities treat students as customers.
45:37
And I don't know about you Diane, but in my time in, in the
45:43
mainstream British universities, I, I was frequently told by
45:49
students that they expected to get a first class degree and
45:52
what do they need to do to get it?
45:54
So there was a presumption on their part.
45:57
And, and these weren't always, well, these might be in my view,
46:04
average students, but they were considering themselves as worthy
46:09
of top degrees. So something, something big has
46:13
happened in universities. And by the way, these figures
46:17
are just averages on the table. I believe that University
46:21
College London, the average figure there is about 50% of
46:26
student getting students getting first class degrees, and it's
46:29
even higher in music colleges where it can reach the 80% mark.
46:34
There have been a couple of things again very recently that
46:37
have contributed to this being even worse.
46:40
One is the rise of AI. In my last year or so in the
46:44
system, I was seeing students submitting ChatGPT written work
46:50
and the university told me when I had suspicions that the
46:54
students didn't write their work.
46:55
I was told to just mark the work at face value because I had no
46:59
way to prove that the students didn't write the work.
47:02
It's not the same as if it's copied and pasted somewhere on
47:05
the Internet and we have plagiarism detecting software
47:08
that can find that this was published on another website
47:10
somewhere. When it's just kind of the
47:12
gibberish that ChatGPT writes, sometimes there's no way to
47:16
prove it. But one of the things that it
47:18
does do, that's one thing to look for if you are a lecturer
47:21
and you're watching this, is that it will sometimes create
47:24
fake references. So it will put together an
47:28
author's name, a journal title, an article name, and it doesn't
47:33
exist. So if you go to look for the
47:35
actual journal article and it's complete rubbish, that's a fake
47:39
reference. But then that takes a lot of
47:40
time to check all of that to make sure that they're using
47:44
real references. And you can also pay for
47:47
upgrades that students can buy to make sure that they're using
47:50
real references if they, if they want to put some money behind
47:53
it. So there's all kinds of things
47:54
that are, that are going on in the background that are, that
47:58
are causing these issues with standards.
48:01
And again, the expectations, as you said, I even had parents
48:03
that called me when they were upset that they had, they had
48:06
spent money on their, their child's education and they
48:09
didn't get the marks that, that they thought that the children
48:13
deserved. And then they would get really
48:14
angry with me when I would say their GDPR rules.
48:17
They're over 18. I can't discuss this with you
48:20
because they saw themselves as the customer because they were
48:23
the ones paying the fees for their child to be there.
48:27
So it was very a very difficult position for me to be in as
48:31
especially when I was a programme director.
48:34
So I guess talking about finances, that brings us to our
48:37
next point, which is value for money universities.
48:40
Well, yeah, that that concept of value for money was introduced
48:45
by the Higher Education Research Act 2017.
48:50
And my goodness, this has had major consequences for higher
48:55
education. I'll just highlight two here. 1
49:01
is the axing of many humanities courses and much humanities
49:07
research funding. So we're talking about the axing
49:11
of modern languages, English literature, history, and all in
49:19
the name of value for money because, well, this links to the
49:24
second point really, the targets have been set for universities
49:30
in terms of the employability of their students, all under the
49:38
under this concept of value for money.
49:41
And one target is that 60% of graduates from a particular
49:48
university must have obtained managerial or professional
49:53
employment. And one view is that humanities
49:57
graduates may be less likely to help those universities hit
50:02
those targets then universities for more applied subjects were
50:08
that would stand to reason. And perhaps IT business,
50:13
science, medicine, this concept of value for money, at what cost
50:20
does it come? Philip Pullman, who's a
50:26
describes in chilling words the likely effects of the axing of
50:32
humanity's courses as being emotional, emotional and
50:37
imaginative starvation. And I speak as somebody who did
50:43
a first degree in, in modern languages and I basically spent
50:49
four years reading French poetry and plays and French novels.
50:55
And I think I'm, I benefited enormously from those four
51:01
years. I wouldn't have it any otherwise
51:04
really. And so this concept of value for
51:08
money, it's, it's leading to, I might say, a very impoverished
51:14
society in terms of culture and spirit.
51:19
I agree. My, my first degree was actually
51:22
in Spanish was, well, I kind of did Spanish and business and
51:26
computing. So I did a lot of reading of
51:29
Spanish poetry and, and Spanish literature and you know, the
51:34
history of at least the Spanish speaking world on across the
51:38
ponds in, in Mexico and South America and Central America.
51:42
And, and one of the things that it did for me was it actually
51:45
made me a better writer in English to learn another
51:48
language at that level. It made my, my English writing
51:53
better. It made my communication better,
51:55
kind of opened up my just my view of the world in a lot of
52:00
ways that those of us who only ever learn one language might
52:04
not experience. So there was value to that and
52:07
obviously created a good foundation for what I went on to
52:10
do professionally for much longer.
52:13
So I, I can't imagine that I would have received or wanted a
52:17
managerial professional role from that first degree because
52:20
that was not in my plan. Actually, my original plan was
52:23
to be a Spanish teacher and I just, I just did not end up
52:26
going that way. But that, that, that idea, I
52:31
think as well of you only go to university to get a high paying
52:34
job is one of the other things that's destroying the
52:37
educational system because that's not the only purpose of a
52:40
university education. So now I think we've got just
52:43
one last point to cover here, because I know we're we're
52:46
watching the time, but our last point here is the managerial
52:50
nature of universities. And this goes back into what you
52:53
mentioned at the beginning as well.
52:56
And I know there's some other points to talk about the
52:58
research excellence framework or the REF, which is basically used
53:03
as the way to, I guess we could quantify the quality of the
53:08
research. And that then influences the
53:10
funding at universities. And it's very biased towards the
53:14
the Oxbridge universities, the Russell Griff Universities, the
53:17
highest universities in the UK system, because they obviously
53:21
have the most resources to create the best research
53:24
according to the research excellence framework.
53:27
I'll put a link in the write up so that people can read about
53:29
the REF. And in more recent years we've
53:32
had the teaching excellence framework as well or the TEF.
53:35
So then again, we're we're putting in these, these
53:38
somewhat, I don't know, dubious things that we have to reach.
53:44
I would say I don't even know how to describe them as to what
53:47
is considered research excellence or teaching
53:49
excellence. And if you don't meet those
53:52
requirements, at least at the research based universities
53:55
where I worked, you have the constant threat of being put
53:58
onto a teaching only contract. So the papers are rated from one
54:03
to four stars. You don't necessarily know who's
54:05
going to rate them or even why. But if you don't create the
54:10
right number of three star or 4 star publications within let's
54:14
say A7 year time periods or even in a particular year, you have
54:19
the constant threat of being put into a teaching only contract
54:23
and losing your research time that you worked so many years to
54:26
to to work work towards, which is quite demotivating for
54:30
someone. Do you have any other points you
54:33
want to cover on this, this managerial, sort of highly
54:36
measured approach to academia? Well, yeah.
54:41
And I would just add to corroborate what you're saying,
54:43
there was a research professor, I think it was at Imperial who
54:49
had a financial objective of bringing in 200, 1000 lbs.
54:54
And it didn't look as though he would attain that and he
54:57
committed suicide. You've probably heard about that
55:01
shocking case. So on the managerial front, and
55:05
I've alluded to this earlier, the the leadership is very top
55:12
down, managerial in style. And well, my goodness, I'm a
55:18
long way from those original universities.
55:21
Do you remember Universitas Scolari Omesh Magistruram, A
55:26
group of teachers and students? My goodness.
55:30
What we have now is an almighty edifice with a hierarchy
55:37
spanning vice chancellor, deputy vice chancellor, pro vice
55:41
chancellor, down to Deans and deputy Deans and you name it.
55:47
And I just, I just thought I'd quote at random 1 University
55:52
what they write on their website and this happens to be Leeds
55:56
University, but I'm not singling them out.
55:59
They refer to the the existence there of a university executive
56:04
group new EG which comprises the vice chancellor and president,
56:09
Provost and deputy vice chancellor, pro vice
56:12
chancellors, executive Deans, chief operating officer, chief
56:16
financial officer, chief people and culture officer and the
56:20
university secretary and registrar.
56:25
And So what is the result of this top heavy management which
56:31
is pervasive in the university sector?
56:34
Well, according to Professor Peter Mandler, professor of
56:38
history at Cambridge, there is a dramatically growing gap between
56:43
the senior management and their working colleagues.
56:47
Other academics speak about pending civil war, but perhaps
56:53
you know we're we're looking we we started by talk talking about
56:57
the withdrawal of funding the withdrawal of government funding
57:02
such funding as there is a lot of it is going to finance these
57:07
extremely senior posts. Is this, is this what
57:12
universities today should look like and are they still worthy
57:17
of the title of university, remembering that it comes from
57:21
that Latin word really versatile, meaning a group, a
57:25
group of students and teachers. Is the function of this massive
57:29
hierarchy to impose control over the teaching and research of
57:36
those involved in those activities?
57:41
Well, I think we mustn't be too negative.
57:46
I don't know that this system can be reformed in its current
57:51
state. It's down to us, I do think, to
57:55
create something better, something new.
57:58
And I don't think that what we're looking at here fulfils
58:03
the lofty ideals of Humboldt and George Beadle at Chicago
58:09
University. And I think we need to return to
58:12
those ideals with a smaller institution.
58:15
I paved the way with Truth University.
58:19
If you're interested in helping with that initiative or studying
58:24
for research qualification, do get in touch.
58:28
www.truthuniversity.co.uk is the website.
58:37
I think this is too far gone. That's the system and we need to
58:42
a bit like the French Impressionists, we need to start
58:47
afresh and they created new Salon for the French
58:52
Impressionists. The old salon were no longer
58:55
capable of identifying innovate innovation in the field of fine
59:00
art, so they started with some new salon.
59:03
Is that where we're at now, do you think, Diane?
59:07
I think so. And I guess it reminds me of
59:10
some of our UK column members who are always joking that those
59:15
of us on the UK column team could create a whole new
59:17
government. And they've already appointed me
59:19
as the education secretary, Brian Garish as Prime Minister,
59:23
Ben Rubin as finance minister and so on.
59:25
So we've, we've got a backup plan and really get to that
59:28
point. I'll just, I'll just leave that
59:32
are there. We're just about out of time,
59:34
unfortunately. Are there any other points that
59:36
you wanted to cover that we haven't been able to mention so
59:39
far? I'd like just to mention one on
59:42
the subject of humanities because it turns out both you
59:46
and I, I started off university with, with, with modern
59:51
languages. And I've covered this in, in
59:54
this book Light Bulb Moments and the Power of Critical Thinking,
59:58
which I wrote with Catherine Armitage.
1:00:00
And you might You might hope that new graduates would excel
1:00:08
in critical thinking, but a survey by the OECDA Fast Survey
1:00:14
800,000 students discovered that.
1:00:17
Only 45% of new graduates had what they considered to be
1:00:23
critical thinking skills, but those students that were more
1:00:28
like most likely to have it out of the cohort of students that
1:00:32
they looked at would guess what from the humanities.
1:00:36
It's interesting point to to end on.
1:00:38
I think I wanted to say as well that we to let the audience know
1:00:42
that we have two more interviews planned with Gloria.
1:00:46
The next one will be with Ben Rubin and they will be talking
1:00:49
about some common interests that they have.
1:00:51
And then the third one will be back with me again, which will
1:00:55
be, I believe, a topic that will totally shock and surprise a lot
1:00:59
of people that see what we have to cover in the third interview.
1:01:04
So just to conclude this first one, I, I just want to thank you
1:01:07
again, Gloria, for working so well with me on uncovering what
1:01:12
I think we will call a higher education in crisis for this
1:01:16
particular interview. And I really hope that the
1:01:20
British public will see this as much as possible so that they
1:01:23
know where their tax money is going and if they have young
1:01:26
people or people of any age attending universities in 2025,
1:01:32
what exactly they're being exposed to and, and what's going
1:01:36
on behind the scenes. And, and I really hope that this
1:01:39
will make people think about what they're doing and what they
1:01:42
will expect going forward from the British university system,
1:01:46
which of course is the oldest in the world and, and known to be
1:01:50
the most reputable. And it's it's absolutely tragic
1:01:52
what has happened to the university system and to those
1:01:56
of us who are actually out for really seeking truth.
1:02:00
And so with that, I think I will leave it there.
1:02:04
This is again, Diane Rasmussen Mcaddy with UK Column News.
1:02:07
And Gloria, thank you again for joining me.
1:02:10
It was a pleasure to have you on today.
1:02:13
Thank you so much, Diane.