
In UK universities there is a daily erosion of integrity - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/24/uk-universities-erosion-integrity-bologna-statement
======
noodlesUK
As a university student in the UK I find myself reminded of these problems on
a very frequent basis. The purpose of universities seems to have shifted from
providing academic research and learning to simply being another stage of
school, with the sole objective of handing out degrees. One of the metrics
that I feel indicates this most strongly is the radical change in hiring at
universities in recent years. It's shocking to know that many universities
(mine included) now employ more full time non-academic staff than full time
academics.

~~~
gaius
_The purpose of universities seems to have shifted from providing academic
research and learning to simply being another stage of school_

There’s no “seems” about it, 50% of school leavers going to university was an
explicit policy goal. There’s no way to reconcile an institution of higher
learning with one that has to accept anyone that applies

~~~
sergiosgc
That makes no sense. It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you
provide a service to the unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality. I
believe it is false. Curricula don't have to be easier if you have a large
student body, and graduation requirements don't have to be lower. Taking in
more students does not inhibit service quality, up to the capacity of the
school, which can be easily scaled by hiring more teachers and more teaching
space.

Anyhow, the volume of students as a change driver for university quality
explanation does not fit with the observations that:

a) Universities employ disproportionately more non-teaching staff than they
used to; and

b) Academic staff has a harder time reaching tenure.

The explanation lies elsewhere.

~~~
gaius
_It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you provide a service to the
unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality_

But it must be. An institution with AAA A-level students can teach more
advanced material at a faster pace than one that admits EEEs. This is surely
obvious, no?

It doesn’t mean anyone is better or worse in a moral sense, it just means more
or less academically able.

~~~
kingkongjaffa
Not at all.

The ability to learn at university is not correlated with A-level results.

Mastery of the material can help give a good starting point, but I've worked
with fantastic E/D/C students and terrible AAA students.

~~~
iguy
_ability to learn at university is not correlated with A-level results_

This is incorrect. They are obviously not 100% correlated (even re-sitting the
same exam isn't!) but the correlation is extremely strong.

------
icc97
This compounds some major long-term problems for education in the UK.

1\. Their school systems are the most elitist/unequal in Europe [0] (from this
TED talk [1]). There are many things I love about the UK but I can never go
back as the school I send my child to now for free would cost £4000-6000 per
year of post-tax income in the UK.

2\. Because of underpaying teachers (In comparison to Belgium the mid-level
art teacher I know gets paid €100/hr) and burying teachers in red-tape there
is a significant shortage of teachers. This has led to the ridiculous lottery
system they now have for picking schools.

3\. The Brexit is going to hit the number of European students hard. Outside
of Oxford and Cambridge, most of the top 10 UK Universities are all in London
with a huge contingent of European students.

So Universities are going to lose their European influx and the incoming
generation of students are going to be poorer.

[0]: [https://imgur.com/a/qqKDgMd](https://imgur.com/a/qqKDgMd)

[1]:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_schleicher_use_data_to_bui...](https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_schleicher_use_data_to_build_better_schools#t-288035)

~~~
nunya213
Honestly that's just kind of cute. Good private schools in the US regularly
cost over $40,000 per year.

~~~
icc97
I'm talking about an average school for ages 4-11.

But this is not a competition about who has the most expensive schools.

I'd rather live in a country where education is free.

~~~
nunya213
Indeed, I'm only pointing out the absurdity of the US system.

------
oldcynic
It's quite appalling how UK universities seem to have changed since tuition
fees. Most saddening is the effective destruction of the Open University as
they now charge the same fees as everyone else. Few can afford to take an OU
course for interest, or mid life career change any more.

The youngest is looking very unlikely to attend university at all thanks to
feedback from those already in the system. I rather get the impression that
paying £9k per year has turned academic excellence into a simple commercial
production line.

~~~
pjc50
The OU was actually one of the great British success stories, a "MOOC" before
the Internet. It's a tragedy if that's coming to an end.

~~~
oldcynic
It's not _quite_ as bad as attending, but cost of a degree is about £18k or so
- at £3k/year if you do the typical spread over 6 years. The cost has been
going up markedly ever since £3k fees first came in.

They still offer bursaries and grants for those on low income, but seem to
have been trimmed to be only partial help, with the rest on a student loan.
I'm fairly sure you used to be able to apply for 100% help.

So it seems far less appealing for those on low or middle income, and all
their traditional successes like those who never did a degree at 18 etc.

------
Angostura
There's also the issue of what has happened now that students have to pay
through the nose for courses. They are now customers who _expect_ high grades
for their fees. This has certainly changed the dynamic with regard to rigorous
marking in some areas

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I can't help feeling we would be better off if responsibility for grading was
taken away from universities as it is for A levels and GCSEs. There are some
problems with that but I suspect they would be outweighed by the benefits.

~~~
thinkingemote
I've anecdotes from two university lecturers on different courses. They both
want some form of external moderation. its what happens for Postgraduate
degrees after all.

What they report is horrifying:

* Essay writing skills are lacking, "its at GCSE level"

* Students contesting any form of criticism - they go via the official channels to argue why they should get a good grade. All schools are tied up in multiple tribunals with existing staff. Often its easier just to pass the student.

* In some cases, students are SUING the university for poor grades

* Plagiarism is commonplace. There is an automated plagiarism detection mechanism for electronic submissions - but they are turned off or ignored as it's so rampant. People literally copying from Wikipedia or copy and pasting from papers to make their own work. Wikipedia copying is especially used for definitions, e.g. "Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship...."

* Students don't see that their education is also their own responsibility, and see it as a purchase. Give me what I pay for.

* Students who don't turn up to classes and seminars demand the same grades as those who do.

* Hundreds of students email lecturers asking for help with their work (much more numbers and frequency than in the past).

They both despair as they see education standards falling, and theres not much
they can do. They don't want to be sued by the students, nor do they want to
spend all their time in tribunals, they are educators first. They see their
own institution as being of very poor quality.

To me - I would look at a league table of education quality for UK
universities. There isn't one, you cant compare. Previously a good chance of
good education was the research output of a department, or the references of
the teachers. But this, as my associates report don't mean anything anymore.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>People literally copying from Wikipedia or copy and pasting from papers to
make their own work. //

My lad is just in UK high-school but I'm surprised at how homework is set with
no provision of resources and no mention of plagiarism or need to cite
sources. The kids are basically expected to find their own sources, which is
ridiculous - making them trust whatever Google gives them.

Once they've been inculcated into the notion that education resides in
googling and cutting and pasting, without even reading the content, then it's
hard to establish a good research ethic.

On top of this the teachers aren't even teaching good use of online search, or
providing access to primary source material that gets referenced.

It's really dire.

Textbooks have their problems but ...

~~~
vertex-four
In FE college, we had an occasional class (as part of something else, can't
remember what) that explained how to use the Internet to research properly,
determine trustworthiness, and cite sources, and also how to use the library
at a basic level. I'd assume that sixth-form colleges in England and their
equivalent elsewhere do the same - but perhaps it's too late by then?

~~~
keithpeter
I can reassure you that 'research methods' courses are mandatory for all
students in the vocational only FE college that I do some teaching in. Taught
by LRC staff.

The plagiarism checker is active as well.

Most of the level 3 award tutors set a small assignment within the first few
weeks of the course to assess writing level and catch any issues like dyslexia
&c.

------
PeterStuer
It's the infestation of 'market' philosophy that is the grindstone on the
academic values. Everything gets beaten into submission of an amoral self-
referential quantitative utility framework. This has become so ingrained that
many, if not most, don't even see it as a choice but simply accept it as some
sort of universal law.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>amoral self-referential quantitative utility framework

My goodness, that's quite a phrase. What do you actually mean?

~~~
PeterStuer
Which part is confusing you?

~~~
pas
What makes a framework self-referential? What does submission of ... mean?

What is this framework? Or which one is this?

------
joshsyn
I have lost confidence in the western university system. Too much high
exorbitant fees, with no future prospects but debt, so I have taken it myself
to learn online via open courses.

~~~
glogla
Not all of West has it this way. US and UK yes, but rest of EU mostly has free
college in same or higher quality.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Scotland is nowhere near as bad as the rest of the UK although you have to
have put up with their dreary weather for three years before attending.

~~~
adam-a
EU residents can also study in Scotland for free. It is only England, Wales
and NI who have to pay the full fees.

~~~
Wildgoose
No, it is only the English that have to pay the full fees, students from Wales
and NI pay a lower rate.

------
Xuper
It would be nice to see some STEM-affirmative universities without any
x-studies leaching. Professional complainer is a viable career path these days
and it starts at uni.

~~~
collyw
Listening to Jonathan Haidt its pretty scary stuff.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBegL_V6AA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IBegL_V6AA)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_Listening to Jonathan Haidt its pretty scary stuff._

Don't listen to it then.

By the way the, UK isn't the same as the US, our problems aren't necessarily
the same as yours.

~~~
collyw
Ignorance is bliss.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Don't listen to the media and you are uninformed, listen to the media and you
are misinformed. I know which I prefer.

~~~
collyw
Probably the media you listen to with an opinion like that.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Didn't you just post a video to some crackpot on YouTube?

------
pjc50
This should probably be seen in the context of the ongoing industrial action
in response to a sneaky attempt to convert pensions from defined-benefit to
defined-contribution, thereby halving their value. This was based on an
extremely questionable financial scenario ("what if all UK universities went
bankrupt?")

~~~
peoplewindow
Er is it a questionable scenario? UK universities all have very similar
businesses, customer bases, staff unionisation levels and risk profiles. It's
quite imaginable that if there was a sudden drop in the number of students
attending university they might all get in dire straits simultaneously.

~~~
pjc50
They have very different financial reserves, especially the Russell Group
ones, and this also presumes that the government would let its entire tertiary
education system collapse without intervening.

~~~
peoplewindow
Well, the intervention is to change the pensions, surely. And the goal is to
intervene _before_ a collapse occurs rather than afterwards.

If the argument is "we don't need to change the university pension scheme
because when they go bankrupt the government will bail them out", I suppose
that should be made directly.

------
triplesec
Universities in the UK have turned into administrator-heavy (as in the US)
property development companies made to enrich the administrators and top
brass, it seems. Here's a story that hints at the issues (UCL and others have
been doing this a lot)
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/25/studen...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/25/students-
sit-in-university-social-cleaning-london-stop-elephant-castle)

While looking for this, I also found this, (slightly off-topic, but somewhat
salient) which makes for sobering reading.
[https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bnk3vm/vices-most-evil-
un...](https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bnk3vm/vices-most-evil-university-
awards)

------
EnderMB
Despite being a British citizen, I don't understand the university model all
that well, but one argument I see being banded about over the creeping levels
of control over UK universities is why the more elite-level universities
haven't opted to go private.

Sure, there was a legitimate argument a while ago with no/low tuition fees.
The government was footing the bill. Now that tuition fees have risen, and
seem to want to continue to rise, what benefit is there for the likes of
Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, and co to remain public?

Someone I used to work with attended the University of Buckingham, one of the
few universities in the UK that is private, and he said that while it was no
Oxbridge, the flexibility of graduating in two years made it completely worth
it. Ironically, a lot of pressure is put on the ex-polytechnics and middling
universities in the UK to justify their high costs, low quality of content,
and average employment figures, with the government often pointing towards the
need for flexibility (i.e. two year degrees to save money).

If the government want to get their claws in, I'm surprised that those with
the freedom to go private haven't decided to, or at least as a way to one-up
their competitors.

------
andersonnnunes
Here in Brazil, in a public university, I saw a policeman (among others)
cheating on exams and professors knowingly ignoring it. Just one case, there
were many others.

Beware of Brazilians. The de facto rule here is "fuck everybody not in my
circle".

------
keithpeter
I finished an undergraduate degree in 1980, when there were around 25000
undergraduates [1] p13/14\. Now there are at least 10 times that many.
Inevitably, the system has had to change to reflect that increase in volume
within the span of a single career - quite a lot of change.

Not sure where the answer lies, but an increasingly large proportion of my
teenager students are opting _not_ to go to university directly at 18, so
there could be a 'correction' on the way over the next generation or so.

[1]
[http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN042...](http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04252/SN04252.pdf)

------
YellowCode
Here is an interesting read

[http://www.culturewars.com/2002/potter.html](http://www.culturewars.com/2002/potter.html)

~~~
pjc50
What does a 2002 article on faxes and children's books have to do with the
present-day UK education sector?

~~~
YellowCode
If you read it, you'll know.

~~~
eesmith
Yeah, I tried, it started with gushing over James Dobson - the man who
believes that beating children is a good thing (this is personal; my parents
used his books for parenting advice) - and C.S. Lewis.

Eg, it complains about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as being a
"deeply incoherent work", and praises Lewis. But the Narnia series is _also_ a
deeply incoherent work.

It describes the book as a narcissistic fantasy, which is a literary
description and an opinion. It then spends paragraphs describing the
psychiatric condition known as narcissism. But the connection is still an
_opinion_.

The author then gives this horrid homophobic nugget:

> One of the most blatant forms of magic through ingestion is, of course,
> homosexuality, and through its connection with narcissism we can get some
> inkling of the purpose behind the major cultural offensive in favor of
> homosexuality. The homosexual is the consumer culture’s version of the ideal
> citizen because he takes all of the strains of narcissism to their logical
> antiessentialist conclusion.

Yeah, I stopped there.

~~~
YellowCode
You're not going to make it.

~~~
eesmith
I'm not going to make what? Make it through a homophobic essay with poorly
constructed arguments? You're right.

------
terriblechat90
Ugh, boo hoo. "Autonomous" Universities have become political and a source of
left propaganda. Only time they complain about it is when the politics are on
the "wrong" side.

------
throw2016
Some significant issues in western democracy can be traced back to the 1980's
and before the fall of communism. Untill then it was important at least for
appearances to show western capitalism and democracy as the best and fairest
political systems for all round prosperity.

Reaganism, Thatcherism and neoliberlism of the Friedman kind unleashed a toxic
ideology that legitimizes and surrenders all decision making and thinking to
markets. It's like a religion and magical thinking. This disproportionately
benefits those with economic power as it is intended to, but under the
Orwellian use of words like 'freedom' and 'efficiency'.

This concentrated economic power is then used to co-opt dissent by economic
means or disarm it to make it meaningless.

Academics along with a free press were a bulwark against unchecked power and
provided dissent. Now they are too tied up with administration and securing
grants to perform that role, and this is not an accident. The free press
similarly have become too intertwined with entrenched interests and government
and have been reduced to a mouth piece for propaganda and special interests.

------
neumann
You argument is not in favor of the poor. Given the way taxation works, free
healthcare and education provide opportunities for lower incomes that aren't
available for private services. When education is free (popular phrasing for
government paid), a poor person with no income can get a free education and
usually financial support and actually get a degree. If healthcare is free,
the burden of the individual is carried by the society. As for 'standard
libertarian arguments', you might as well say 'myopic perspective'.

------
Hasknewbie
I agree with the article but I can only note, once more, that it is from The
Guardian, who did run multiple articles in support of no-platforming in
universities.

But look who comes crying about freedom of inquiry now, once said "erosion of
integrity" is done by right-wing bureaucrats. But the no-platforming happens
mostly in the US, while government interferences is happening in the UK, so
they will probably get away with their double standard one more time.

~~~
unfunco
Whenever the theme turns a little bit orange on the Guardian, you're reading
an opinion, there are lots of opinion columnists at the Guardian and many of
them have differing views. If you want a more consistent view from the
Guardian, then stay in the news sections (the theme is red for that), this
case, the opinion is by a professor at the University of Cambridge, it's not
an unbiased report from a journalist.

------
vixen99
And is the UK government behind the erosion of free speech identified at a
large number of institutions who have banned and actively censored ideas on
campus? Shall we assume they are helpless in the face of demands from
Whitehall?

[http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-
rankings](http://www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings)

~~~
mayniac
I have a few issues with that link.

Namely that a traffic light system is a huge, _huge_ , _HUGE_
oversimplification of complex issues. While the analysis seems fairly
transparent, I don't think many people will actually look into it past the
traffic light.

I checked out the uni I went to: apparently the students union got an amber
light because of "no tolerance to sexual harassment". How exactly does that
violate free speech? The right to free speech unequivocally does not give you
the right to harass people in any way. Similarly "Rules and Regulations for
the Use of Information and Communications Technology" is an amber for
institutions: does that mean all AUPs are in violation of freedom of speech?
Most of them come down to "please don't hack our infrastructure or download
anything that will make the police come round".

Also when things like "bans on specific ideologies" are very likely to get
misconstrued. Banning groups which verbally harass others is likely going to
be seen as a ban on free speech, despite the fact that such bans may be
warranted.

The whole analysis and ranking system seems biased, and completely garbage to
me.

Edit: since I'm an idiot and didn't realise that you could expand the
amber/red points on the site, my uni SU's "no tolerance to sexual harassment"
was due to them adopting the NUS (National Union of Students) guideline that
sexual harassment is defined as ‘any unwanted comments which makes someone
uncomfortable’, and the ICT rule was ‘Users must ensure that the content and
tone of their email messages cannot be considered offensive.’

Both of these appear reasonable to me. There's some genuine debate to be had
over the issue of no-platforming but all this site is doing is furthering
their own agenda, which seems to be that they should have the right to insult
and harass people however they want. As always, this is relevant here:
[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

~~~
SuoDuanDao
That particular xkcd gets linked a lot in this debate. I really wonder what
happened between when the author drew that comic and when he drew this one:
[https://www.xkcd.com/137/](https://www.xkcd.com/137/)

~~~
sudosteph
I don't see any incompatibility there?

Seems like in 137 he's saying that he doesn't want to sacrifice individuality
and creativity for the sake of maintaining a banal existence that doesn't
deviate from the norm out of fear. He's accepting the risks that come with
making his opinions public, and challenging assumptions that he should just
shut up, in part because he has confidence in the validity of his beliefs and
a willingness to defend them.

The more recent one is about people who publicize poorly constructed opinions
with no consideration to the potential consequences it will create for their
interpersonal and community relationships. Those folks are welcome to say
"fuck that shit" like the character in 137 and go build their own forums or
whatever to spread and defend those ideas. But most of these types would
prefer to whine and call themselves victims.

~~~
henryaj
> he doesn't want to sacrifice individuality and creativity for the sake of
> maintaining a banal existence that doesn't deviate from the norm out of fear

Exactly. Just apply that to the fear of running afoul of draconian speech
codes designed to reduce the amount of "offence" people experience.

~~~
sudosteph
"Don't be a jerk" doesn't seem draconian to me. The people I see whining about
their speech having consequences (ie, Milo) are usually aiming to offend. They
aren't running into obscure codes, they're being jerks for fun and profit.

~~~
sheepmullet
> "Don't be a jerk" doesn't seem draconian to me.

And who gets to decide what is acceptable?

My college had an atheist club that hung up a banner saying "Religion is for
the feeble minded" \- that's offensive to billions of people.

Can we shut them down and boot them off campus?

My college also had communist clubs with communist slogans - many of my
extended family were killed by communists so that's obviously offensive.

Can we shut them down and boot them off campus?

> The people I see whining about their speech having consequences (ie, Milo)
> are usually aiming to offend.

By the time people like Milo come along hundreds of legitimate speakers have
already been silenced - that's how people like Milo realize it's an easy and
lucrative market to take advantage of.

~~~
sudosteph
That's a bad comparison. Clubs like those, especially at a public college
actually ARE protected by the 1st amendment. You can choose not to join, but
cannot prevent them from meeting. The only thing the school can do is limit
the non-student guests a club brings, and even that power is typically limited
to in cases of security concerns, which can often be remedied if the club
helps foot the costs for increased security (see: UW Milo visit where counter
protestor was shot)

Twitter and Reddit and the like are public platforms that belong to a private
entity. So it's private property and the people who own it can curate or be
selective if they choose.

All that said, I'm no fan of "no-platforming", but it's not as prominent as
you might think, at least on the public college level. I went to a college
where random fire and brimstone preachers would stand in front of the library,
bang on buckets and call women "whores" as they passed by. Nobody invited
them, they just wanted an audience. And though I hated those guys, I
understand their right to do that (with a permit) and to say whatever.
Likewise, it was my right to laugh in his face, call him an asshole. Because
he was being a jerk.

~~~
henryaj
> Clubs like those, especially at a public college actually ARE protected by
> the 1st amendment.

In UK universities they have no such protection, and similar clubs have been
shut down.

My alma mater, University College London, banned the Nietzsche Society:
[https://thetab.com/2014/06/03/thus-spake-the-
su-14611](https://thetab.com/2014/06/03/thus-spake-the-su-14611)

