July 3, 2025 • 62 mins
Should you send your children to university? Prof Gloria Moss and Prof Diane Rasmussen McAdie uncovered the higher education crisis that has recently unfolded in the UK and across the West.
Read the full write-up: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/universities-are-in-crisis-with-prof-gloria-moss-part-1
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Hello everyone, this is Diane Rasmussen Mccaddy with UK column
News. I'm really happy today to be
joined by Professor Gloria Moss for what is going to be a very
important and hopefully interesting and revealing
discussion about the nature of universities in the UK as they
exist now in modern times. I've been working with Professor
(00:28):
Moss on a number of issues recently, including what's going
on in libraries with the children's books.
She's written a fabulous articlefor us recently for UK column
about the Fabians, and she's nowdoing a three-part series for us
on the idea of post truth in oursociety.
But today we're going to be focusing on universities.
So again, Gloria, welcome to UK column.
(00:51):
Do you want to maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and
your background and how you relate to the topic of
universities? Yeah, great to be back, Diane.
And in terms of myself, I'm a bit of a hybrid because I spent
some of my career in industry asa training person.
(01:11):
I've got an HR background, organizational psychology,
Improving organisations and the quality of the culture in
organisations has been a big priority in that part of my
life. And then I moved on to academia
in order to actually investigatecognitive sex differences.
(01:34):
Yeah, I did that at a time when the talk about androgyny was
looming on the horizon and I'd made a discovery and was very
keen to get that discovery whichcounted androgyny counted, the
whole notion that you can actually change your sex.
I was very keen to get that research through peer review.
(01:57):
And I, I did that and, and then I moved on to, to doing research
on this, this abiding interest of mine, healthy organisations,
how to turn toxic organisations into healthy ones.
And I focused on leadership and best practice leadership.
(02:19):
And all of that was in a mainstream British university.
And after I became a professor, I had more time to do this
research. I've written 80 peer reviewed
journal articles and conference papers and eight books.
(02:42):
After 2019, the university system, such as it was, was, was
didn't provide the hospitable environment in which I could
continue that work. So I now work independently.
I work as an independent researcher, but I know the
(03:05):
university system very well because I worked in it, the
mainstream university system, for many years.
And what we're going to do todayis talk about what, what is that
like that university system and is it fit for purpose?
You worked in the university system, Diane, and you're now
(03:26):
outside that system. Yes, absolutely.
It's really changed quite a bit and what for me seems like a
relatively short amount of time.When I started my PhD in went
through kind of the process of what was, you know, going
through the promotion process over 20 years and eventually
(03:47):
reaching full professor. I would say that when I started
my PhD, which was 2002 and finished in 2006 and got the
title of full professor startingin 2023 and then I was shortly
after. We're a race for my profession
for doing what I thought was what professors were supposed to
(04:08):
do, which is to question things.That's what I was taught I was
supposed to be doing when as a professor, especially as what I
achieved to be, you know, the intellectual top of my field in
terms of leadership and, and education and research.
And like you built a very large CV around my topic in
(04:29):
informatics and libraries. And it really just changed quite
a bit from when I got into the system in the beginning, which
of course started in America andthen I worked in Canada and then
came to the UK to work in 2015. In the very beginning, it was
sort of like find the questions that you want to ask.
You have the right to ask those questions and it's your
(04:51):
responsibility to to use the data that you gather to answer
those questions. But it just even, I think even
in the past few years for me andmaybe you have a different
perspective that changed quite significantly just in those
twenty years. So I guess it would be helpful
for our viewers to hear a littlebit about the background of
(05:13):
university, since we're kind of talking about the the modern
crisis university. So if you want to maybe go into
some of the background and the history of universities, I think
that would be helpful to start the conversation.
Yes, because as you say, even in, in in your lifetime, you've
seen major change. And if we look at the span of
history, then my goodness, there's major change.
(05:35):
And some of this is, is detailedin this book published by Truth
University Press entitled The Dark Side of Academia, How Truth
is Suppressed. And that's written by the Secret
professor. And there's a foreword from John
Hammer and then afterward from Doctor Tess Laurie.
(05:57):
So there you can read about the history of universities.
They they actually go back to 1088.
Bologna has the crown and students and teachers, quite
simple really would come together.
And that is where the the word university comes from, that the
(06:20):
title of these organisations wasin Latin Universitas Scholarium
A, a, a group of scholars and teachers.
And they were small groups. They were not the massive
edifices that you think of today, not at all.
(06:43):
And Oxford followed in quick succession in 1096.
Paris 11:50 And the rest is history, shall we say.
Originally those groups of scholars, well the scholars were
foreign nationals actually in inthose cities.
And would you believe it, the scholars, the students would
(07:05):
actually decide the academics salaries.
My goodness, how, how that's changed today as we see vice
chancellors on stratospheric salaries.
So the beginning was way back inthe 11th century and thinking on
(07:25):
universities of course, changed,you know, from from the original
Universita Scholarium at Magisterium, groups of scholars
and teachers, thinking changed. And when we reached the 18th,
19th century, an important figure von Humboldt in Germany,
(07:47):
he conceived of universities as a place for the cultivation of
the mind and character. And he saw university work as
being rooted in principles of neutrality and freedom from
ideological and private interests.
(08:10):
And maybe those listening to ourconversation would think that is
how universities remain as sort of neutral beacons of
enlightenment. Well, we'll, we'll find out
whether this is the case or not.But Humbok wasn't a lone voice,
shall we say? We could mention others, but I'd
(08:32):
like to single out a remarkable president of the University of
Chicago. He was actually the 7th
president, George Beadle. We're talking 1950s now.
He spoke about the importance ofthe quest for truth.
He was a high flying geneticist.He'd actually shared a Nobel
(08:54):
Prize in 1958 for his research into the role of genes in
regulating biochemical events within cells.
Listen to what this fine mind said, he said.
Quotes We 1 cannot search for truth with a closed mind or
(09:15):
without without the right to question or doubt at every
stage. Any injunction to close the
mind, to restrict one's beliefs arbitrarily or to accept on
authority without doubt violatesthe concepts of freedom of the
(09:35):
mind. And many of you will say that
this is your ideal of a university as well.
And many will say possibly that actually now we've come a very
long way away from the vision ofHumboldt and of George Eagle.
(09:58):
And this is what Diana and I aregoing to look at today.
Have we moved away? And if we have moved away from
the striking visions, what are the factors that are to blame?
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
mentioned earlier in her own career and the changes that
we've seen since the Universities of Humboldt.
And George Beadle. We all know the phrase he who
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
funding of British universities is concerned, and it will be a
similar story in many other countries as well.
What you'll see is a dramatic decline in government funding to
British universities. We see that between the years
(11:05):
2010 and 2022 to 3. These are figures from the
Commons library in parliament that government funding to
universities fell listen to thisfrom £16 billion to just £4
billion over that period of a little more than 10 years.
(11:28):
So the reality now is that government monies for teaching
in universities has reduced by amassive 75% and the budget for
teaching is now quarter what it was and reducing.
And government monies for research have reduced by the
(11:50):
same amount, 75% and have fallenfrom a high of £10 billion.
Now I'm not saying that government funding is
necessarily all fine and dandy, because of course government
funding, when I've looked at calls for research put out by
(12:10):
the research councils of Britainand other countries, that those
calls for research inviting academics to apply for
government monies, as you might have predicted, they're
following very much mainstream agendas.
Example the Economics and SocialScience Research Council, ESRC,
(12:34):
they've funded these projects inthe past, learning to like
robots, attracting internationalstudents who pay more fees than
national ones, how to attract them to the UK.
So we're not saying that government funding for research
is necessarily the panacea, but what we can say with certainty
(12:57):
is that now it the the volume offunding has dropped so
dramatically, the short form hasbeen made-up by private funding.
This is a table showing the monies going to universities
from two of the biggest funders of universities today worldwide.
(13:21):
And yeah, you've probably guessed it, it's the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and it's the Welcome Trust.
The Welcome Trust has has a massive £16 billion in its
coffers to offer to universitiesin the decade leading up to
2032. So how is this money being
(13:45):
spent? Well, if you look at the table,
you can see the Gates fund totalled a massive 11 billion, I
mean slightly less than the Welcome, but still very large,
which was offered to O471 universities worldwide in 66
(14:09):
countries. So you can see the impact that
Bill Gates funding is happening on universities worldwide.
Looking at Britain, Oxford was the biggest beneficiary of Gates
funding receiving a whopping $375 million over a four year
(14:31):
period, 2014 to 18. And as we move on in time,
Oxford received almost 10 million power, $1,000,000 for
research on vaccines in 2020, another almost $11 million for
(14:56):
improving understanding of COVIDand creating a what they call
therapeutic accelerator. And the Welcome Trust Co funded
that project. That last project, Cambridge has
also received Gates funding, notto the same amount as Oxford,
(15:21):
but but some of the money that they've received, they used to
fund GATE, what they call Gates scholars.
So we can kind of second guess the kind of research that those
Gates scholars might be doing. And note that Gates received,
even though he never completed his first degree, he received an
(15:44):
honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.
It always helps to have friends in high places, does it not,
Diane? And and we mustn't forget
Imperial, Who led the Clarion call during COVID times.
(16:05):
They received a massive $185 million from the Bill Gates
Foundation and 140,000 for modelling COVID.
And that was the model Ferguson,Professor Ferguson behind that
one that predicted 500,000 deaths, computer model which has
(16:29):
been which has been widely critiqued.
UCL University College London, high-ranking University 2019.
They received what close to $11 million for their research on
vaccines. Southampton University likewise
(16:49):
smaller sum, but for research onvaccines.
And, well, I didn't want to crowd out the table, but you
know, the theme continues. University of Exeter received
funding for examining the potential for BCG vaccination to
reduce the impact of COVID-19 inhealthcare.
(17:11):
Workers at Warwick University received nearly $14 million for
research, pressing the danger ofvariants.
So the universities were standing tall, shall we say,
behind the COVID narrative. And many of you will have heard
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
billion into $200 billion. And here we have the
university's complicit in this, courtesy of Bill Gates funding.
I don't know what you think of this DIA.
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,
which are obviously major funders, but it's also the also
the people who support the the research in terms of what needs
to happen in publications. Because obviously your research
gets funded based on a certain agenda.
And then if your research doesn't align with the
sustainable development Goals, for example, which you have to
(18:22):
indicate when you upload your research nowadays into
university systems, when your articles or your books get
published, then you're not actually able to put them into
the system. So if you haven't met SDG 7 or
13 or whichever 1 you think can relate to your research, then
the university doesn't want to even to see that you've you've
had it published. So that all of course relates to
(18:45):
the funding because if you can'tget it published and you don't
have any reason to get the funding.
And so it all has to work together.
So I think this then goes into, I guess the next issue of peer
review, right? So we all know potentially that
well, we know as academics that peer review has to happen to
make sure that supposedly it's reviewed by experts to me before
(19:09):
it gets published. But there are some issues of
corruption going on as well, I would say within peer review.
So I'll let you talk a little bit more about that.
Peer review is an absolute critical part of the academic
system, if not the linchpin of the whole system created by
Robert Maxwell in 1951. Yep, peer review didn't exist
(19:34):
before then with arguably highlyquestionable funding kick
starting the whole thing. And if you'd like to read more
about that, I published an article.
It's published on Principia Scientific website.
Just just Google my name and Robert Maxwell and you'll see
some information on this highly questionable funding.
(19:56):
And I suppose there are two big problems with peer review.
And I say that as somebody who'shad, you know, sort of up to 80
articles through peer review andI've acted as a reviewer on
editorial boards myself. But the two big problems really
(20:17):
are firstly, the very conservative nature of academic
journals. Conservative is a is a rather
kind. Word 2 articles in a highly
ranked journal have actually pointed this out.
Very fascinating this the the The journal is the Proceedings
(20:37):
of the National Academy of Sciences and the two articles
were published in 2021 and then again in 2024.
And the first of those articles in P Nas concluded that
innovative papers were more likely to be rejected and less
(20:58):
innovative articles. And the second article from 2024
in the same journal highlighted the fact that 3 elite medical
journals had desk rejected 12 ofthe 14 articles that had become
(21:18):
the most popular in their field.In other words, elite journals,
the top journals that academics in top institutions are
encouraged, black bludgeoned, you might say, to to publish in.
Are there not really to publish innovative work, but less
innovative work. And if I refer you to Kuhn, The
(21:45):
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Absolutely a
crucial book from the 1970s, Coon said that most research
done in universities is what he calls normal research, tinkering
around the edges of a paradigm. And Coon says that the system is
not really set up at all to shift paradigms.
(22:08):
It's just there to maintain existing paradigms.
And so it is with with mainstream journals.
So that's one problem. They're not geared up to to
being innovative at all. The second problem is the fact
that the whole process of selecting articles for peer
(22:28):
review publication is highly questionable and we haven't got
very long today. But if I just flag up three
issues, First is the arbitrary nature of the whole process of
peer review. And you don't need to take my
word for that. We've had editors in chief chief
(22:50):
like Robbie Fox from the BritishMedical Journal and Richard
Horton from another medical journal, this time The Lancet,
both vouching for the arbitrary nature whereby articles get
selected. Robbie Fox obviously had a sense
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
those that reach the bottom? And Richard Horton obviously
likes language. His his his his description of
the peer review process. He describes it as biased,
unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, and frequently
(23:34):
wrong. So you get their point.
Not only that, but these journals very often have their
own agendas and, and the best way of illustrating that is with
reference to something that Richard Horton, editor in chief,
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
activist. Yeah.
He's saying the journal should be selecting articles to fit
certain themes. And separately from that, he
said the journals need to Picking up on what Diane told us
just then, the journals need to follow United Nations
(24:20):
sustainability, sustainable development goals.
And the final problem, problem I'd like to draw your attention
to, which you may be less aware of, I don't know, is the problem
of plagiarism. Yep, it's been found that
several academics, many of them extremely senior, have been
(24:44):
guilty of the cardinal sin of plagiarism.
And if you look at the next table, you'll see some of the
main offenders noted down. So we've got institutions on the
left. Harvard, the number one
university in the US, their their fifth highest paid
(25:05):
professor, Francesca Gino, whoseresearch topic was honesty and
ethical behaviour was found to have falsified her data sets.
She's no longer employed by Harvard University and
Stamford's high up the pecking order in American universities.
The president no less, Mark Tessier Levine.
(25:29):
He had to resign in 2023 since he hadn't corrected errors
pointed out to him by the Journal and Harvard again their
Cancer Institute that at the Darna Farber Cancer Institute
has, I think this is still beinginvestigated, the amount of the
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
review, which is the linchpin. And it's the linchpin largely
because academic promotion recruitment is is very much
dependent on the number of journal articles that you have
(26:18):
to your credit. And every seven or eight years
in Britain, universities are subjected to a massive research
assessment exercise in which theacademic and peer review outputs
are are the main barometer, shall we say, of a university's
(26:40):
research excellence. Well, that's what they say.
And so can't stress too highly the importance, the important
place that peer review occupies in academia.
And if the system itself is opento abuse in the way that we've
said, you might question the very value of the academic
(27:04):
system in which that is placed. Third factor that might be
moving us away from the worthy ideals of George Beadle and
Humboldt. And that's the global focus that
we find in universities today. And there's another slide here
that illustrates this. The World Economic Forum, would
(27:25):
you believe, has grouped universities under its umbrella.
And this grouping of universities has called the
Global Universities Leaders Forum Gulf and well, you could
guess, I'm sure the universitiesthat are members of Gulf, the
so-called top universities in Britain, America and elsewhere.
(27:48):
What can we say when universities are captured by the
World Economic Forum? And it's insidious in Nvidia's
agendas. And not just that, but you can
find on the WF website an article written by a then very
(28:09):
senior Oxford academic Pro Vice Chancellor, External Affairs
co-authored by a professor at Queensland.
And this is 2020. I'm quoting from this book, The
Dark Side of Academia, page 149,just a very short extract from
(28:29):
these two professors article talking about the place of
teaching and research in universities.
They say that through their engagement, teaching and
research, universities must redouble their efforts to work
alongside corporations, governments and NGOs as they
search for new business models and policies to assist the Great
(28:55):
Reset. Well, we could really stop
there, couldn't we? With those three factors, we're
seeing the university system captured by private funding and
by global agendas. And we've reached a point where
you may have read about this. Last year, a lecturer at
(29:17):
University College London was removed from her module
leadership following complaints from Chinese students.
We make up now 25% of the student body at University
College London and they contribute not the 9000
something pounds that domestic students contribute, but a but a
(29:40):
weighty 40,000 lbs apiece. And the.
The crime of the lecturer it wasto highlight data from the
Global Slavery Index, which suggested that China had the
second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.
And she was also labeled anti Chinese after catching 2 Chinese
(30:04):
students cheating in an exam. And her head of department at
University College London said It said that the university
needed to retain a good reputation among future Chinese
applications. So where is this taking us?
That's a good question. If I could just add in there as
(30:26):
well. I think my most recent
university experience is a little bit more recent than
yours since you left the system.And I would say that even
especially since 2020, there's been a major increase the number
of international students. And, and I think part of this
(30:47):
might be due to the funding issues that we're talking about
because to be attending a university, US university
university where in the West because of the amount that they
pay. And the other issue with that is
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
terms of their language requirements and in terms of
their preparation for high levelacademic work.
And so we get the money coming in, but we don't, we don't,
we're not creating good graduates.
So then actually what happens isthat the entire system erodes
(31:29):
because we're not producing goodresearch.
And the research that we are producing is trying to meet the
needs of the, the globalist demands that are placed on us
to, to meet the sustainable development goals or, or make
the World Economic Forum happy with us.
And then you, you lose the wholepoint of why you're doing this
work in the first place, which leads to our next point here,
(31:53):
which is academic freedom, right?
So one of the reasons that I lost my position in the system,
not that I'm sad about it anymore, but because I have this
wonderful platform now with UK column and I'm more than happy
to be here. But the issue that, but the
problem that is actually happening is that academic
(32:14):
freedom in general is just goingalong with us.
We cover frequently on UK columnissues of freedom of speech,
issues of, you know, what we're allowed to say and not say in
this entire society where it's one of those things supposed to
be very well protected in a university system.
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,
the issues of not putting pornographic material in front
of children and libraries, whichis obviously very important to
me, which I've covered extensively.
The problem is that one of the things that we've seen recently
that one of our UK column authors has uncovered, Hugh
(32:57):
McCarthy, is that the the UN andthe World Health Organization,
for example, believe that children should be treated as
sexual beings from birth. And that's now in globalist
policy. So if I speak out and say we
shouldn't be putting sex manualsin front of 6 year olds, that's
actually going against globalistpolicy, which is then funding
(33:19):
the university. So it's all in a big circle that
you can't get out of what you try to expose.
What's going on? So if you want to say anything
else about academic freedom, that that's just been one
example of what's happened to me, but I know it's happened to
a lot of others as well for for speaking out on different
issues. Well, exactly.
(33:40):
And I put a table together just highlighting some of the
academics who've been censored, ranging from Julie Poness,
Professor Julie Ponessen from the largest universities in
Canada. She refused to take the vaccine.
She was a professor of ethics. Do you believe it?
And she insisted on informed consent, as she should.
(34:02):
And she lost her job. And here in Britain, Professor
Chris Exley from Keele University, his focus was on the
harms of aluminium, including invaccines, not exclusively in
vaccines. And life became extremely
difficult for Professor Exley. And then in in America, Mark
(34:26):
Tikrzynski, molecular immunologist and actually
president at the time of Thomas Jefferson University, his crime
was liking a number of tweets that questioned the COVID
treatments, questioned what you were talking about there, Diane.
I think gender reassignment, bigpharma.
(34:48):
And so he lost his job. And there is an irony there
because Thomas Jefferson himselftalked, actually said, that
people cannot be safe without information.
And then there's the case of Professor Eve, whose story is
described in this book here, Professor of management and
(35:09):
marketing, whose work on best practice leadership was not
encouraged by her at university.In fact, she had a Commission to
write an article, one of the leading newspapers on education
in the world, and the universitytold her that she was not to
send that article on best practices leadership out.
(35:33):
It subsequently came to light inan e-mail that that that article
could have caused, in the view of the senior people of that
university, could have caused people to question the
leadership style and effectiveness of vice
chancellors Who we will get to this in a little bit, operate a
(35:56):
very, very top down leadership style.
I would say from my own background in organizational
psychology that this is worst practice leadership.
But a bit like you were saying down it, it does seem to be a
style, this very controlling style of leadership that is
being promoted by those pulling the strings.
(36:19):
So the Rockefeller Foundation produced a report in 2010
entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and
International Development, and it was, yeah, it was engaged in
a number of scenario plans. What that report of Rockefeller
(36:40):
predicted was a world of tightertop down government control, a
world of more authoritarian leadership because the report
says limited innovation was needed from the populations of
the world. So a professor, Professor E, who
(37:02):
promotes a very different type of leadership is not going to
find a natural home in a mainstream university.
So we're talking about the cancellation not just of people
who threaten the medical system or mainstream science, but
(37:25):
people who threaten the system for control that operates an art
in our world today. And according to somebody I
know, you know Diane Dennis Hayes, and this is the next
table, Professor emeritus now ofeducation, He was at Derby
University. Universities cannot really be
(37:47):
said to be universities unless they allow unrestricted freedom
of speech. And quite how restricted
speeches is difficult to get a handle on.
But there was a unique moment in2018 when a magazine Spiked
produced undertook a survey on free speech in universities and
(38:13):
you can see what they found on that table.
Quite shocking. This was a few years ago, it's
probably worse now. They found that 55% of
universities actively censor speech, 39% stifle speech
through excessive regulation, and the shocking conclusion was
(38:34):
that just 6% of universities aretruly free, open places.
I guess I would add in in there as well that I've been covering
on UK column the issue of the the current act that was passed
in 2023 that was meant to protect freedom of speech and
academic freedom and higher education.
(38:55):
When Bridget Phillipson first came into office as education
secretary last year, she halted it, saying, well, there's
potential and anti-Semitism and,and all these other things that
she was bringing in, saying thatwe needed to look at it to make
sure that there was no harm being done.
And it's now going through as ofthe 1st of August.
(39:16):
The Office of Students, Office for Students has provided some
guidance on how to do this. And unfortunately they've taken
away the tort reform that was going to be in there because you
can no longer sue for having your rights violated financially
because universities don't have the money to pay for it.
Think it was the University of Exeter recently that got fined.
(39:39):
It was 575,000 lbs for not following the academic freedom
principles for somebody. And I've I've also got an
interview with Professor Dennis Hayes on UK column, which
viewers can find if they want toget the full idea of academic
freedom from his perspective as well as representative from the
students for academics for academic freedom, which I did
(40:01):
late last year in 2024. So we can you can look at those
for more detail. The issues for students is that
there's the decolonization agenda.
Which is also very dangerous forprotecting basically the British
system of knowledge, all of the history in this country and in
(40:25):
any Western country where they're pushing this
decolonization agenda. So do you, do you want to talk
about that a little bit? As as we speak, libraries are
decolonizing the books in the inthose libraries.
Exeter University. If you want to see what's going
on, look no further than Exeter and the West Country.
(40:48):
They have a reading group discussing liberating the
library, what it means to decolonize, and well, you you
explained, I think I am that that often means removing books
written by Caucasians if you want to.
Learn more Sorry, I'm going to hold this up for the viewers.
(41:08):
This book called Narrative Expansion tell us exactly how
this is being done, interpretingdecolonization and academic
libraries. This is this is published by
SILLIP, which is my former professional body for library
and information professionals inthe UK, tells exactly how
they're doing it. And this is also happening not
(41:31):
just for libraries, but for curriculum as well.
A lot of subjects, probably all of the subjects now have
guidance and within their own universities of their own
professional bodies on how to decolonize the curriculum.
Which again, people are seeing that textbooks that they've used
for years for their students or for their research, like
(41:53):
disappearing from the library catalogs and from the the
collections because they were written by white people or
straight men or whatever the offense of the moment is.
And they're putting in this critical race theory.
We're also seeing that exams arebeing considered racist because
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
international students who are coming here and paying £40,000 a
year to get a British education.So we see a lot of things
happening around the academic freedom, but also this is also
causing our students to have problems because they can no
(42:37):
longer apparently handle hearingcertain curriculum points.
If it sounds too white or it's too offensive, then they get
triggered and they have safe spaces that they're allowed to
go to and and experience therapydogs so that they can calm down
and get a cup of tea. And I've covered this as well
and on new segments, but I thinkthat actually all does tie into
(42:58):
academic freedom because students are just no longer able
to handle it because they're coming in with expectations with
mental health issues with however they were affected
during the lock UPS that we wentthrough in 2020 and 2021.
So there's a lot of things goingon there.
And I think that leads us to ournext point, which is declining
academic standards, if you want to go into that next.
(43:22):
It does very much look as thoughthere's a massive decline in the
standards of marking that contribute to the degree
classification that students come away with.
And I've put together a table sothat showing this isn't a matter
(43:42):
of opinion, this is very much a matter of fact.
I focused here on on the Britishsituation.
So back in the year 1970, a first class degree were very
rarely awarded. If you were at Warwick
University, it was awarded to just 6% of the cohort.
(44:04):
Bath University, very similar, 8%, Cambridge slightly higher,
but we're well under the 15% mark.
Fast forward to the 1990s in Certainly that's the time that
Tony Blair introduced tuition fees towards the end of the
1990s and the average. Before the tuition fees was
(44:27):
introduced, the average proportion of students who were
awarded a first class degree wasjust 7%.
Then we get the advent of tuition fees and things start to
change. 2009 to 2010, these are average averages across Britain.
(44:48):
15% of students get first class degrees.
You can see the numbers, it's edging up all the time. 18% by
2000 and 1819 have reached 28 percent. 2000 and 1920 massive
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
1970s. In fact, the years before
tuition fees were introduced andwhat perhaps is not surprising
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
mainstream British universities,I, I was frequently told by
students that they expected to get a first class degree and
what do they need to do to get it?
So there was a presumption on their part.
And, and these weren't always, well, these might be in my view,
(46:04):
average students, but they were considering themselves as worthy
of top degrees. So something, something big has
happened in universities. And by the way, these figures
are just averages on the table. I believe that University
College London, the average figure there is about 50% of
(46:26):
student getting students gettingfirst class degrees, and it's
even higher in music colleges where it can reach the 80% mark.
There have been a couple of things again very recently that
have contributed to this being even worse.
One is the rise of AI. In my last year or so in the
system, I was seeing students submitting ChatGPT written work
(46:50):
and the university told me when I had suspicions that the
students didn't write their work.
I was told to just mark the workat face value because I had no
way to prove that the students didn't write the work.
It's not the same as if it's copied and pasted somewhere on
the Internet and we have plagiarism detecting software
that can find that this was published on another website
(47:10):
somewhere. When it's just kind of the
gibberish that ChatGPT writes, sometimes there's no way to
prove it. But one of the things that it
does do, that's one thing to look for if you are a lecturer
and you're watching this, is that it will sometimes create
fake references. So it will put together an
author's name, a journal title, an article name, and it doesn't
(47:33):
exist. So if you go to look for the
actual journal article and it's complete rubbish, that's a fake
reference. But then that takes a lot of
time to check all of that to make sure that they're using
real references. And you can also pay for
upgrades that students can buy to make sure that they're using
real references if they, if theywant to put some money behind
it. So there's all kinds of things
(47:54):
that are, that are going on in the background that are, that
are causing these issues with standards.
And again, the expectations, as you said, I even had parents
that called me when they were upset that they had, they had
spent money on their, their child's education and they
didn't get the marks that, that they thought that the children
deserved. And then they would get really
angry with me when I would say their GDPR rules.
(48:17):
They're over 18. I can't discuss this with you
because they saw themselves as the customer because they were
the ones paying the fees for their child to be there.
So it was very a very difficult position for me to be in as
especially when I was a programme director.
So I guess talking about finances, that brings us to our
next point, which is value for money universities.
(48:40):
Well, yeah, that that concept ofvalue for money was introduced
by the Higher Education ResearchAct 2017.
And my goodness, this has had major consequences for higher
education. I'll just highlight two here. 1
(49:01):
is the axing of many humanities courses and much humanities
research funding. So we're talking about the axing
of modern languages, English literature, history, and all in
the name of value for money because, well, this links to the
(49:24):
second point really, the targetshave been set for universities
in terms of the employability oftheir students, all under the
under this concept of value for money.
And one target is that 60% of graduates from a particular
(49:48):
university must have obtained managerial or professional
employment. And one view is that humanities
graduates may be less likely to help those universities hit
those targets then universities for more applied subjects were
that would stand to reason. And perhaps IT business,
(50:13):
science, medicine, this concept of value for money, at what cost
does it come? Philip Pullman, who's a
describes in chilling words the likely effects of the axing of
humanity's courses as being emotional, emotional and
(50:37):
imaginative starvation. And I speak as somebody who did
a first degree in, in modern languages and I basically spent
four years reading French poetryand plays and French novels.
And I think I'm, I benefited enormously from those four
(51:01):
years. I wouldn't have it any otherwise
really. And so this concept of value for
money, it's, it's leading to, I might say, a very impoverished
society in terms of culture and spirit.
I agree. My, my first degree was actually
(51:22):
in Spanish was, well, I kind of did Spanish and business and
computing. So I did a lot of reading of
Spanish poetry and, and Spanish literature and you know, the
history of at least the Spanish speaking world on across the
ponds in, in Mexico and South America and Central America.
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
language at that level. It made my, my English writing
better. It made my communication better,
kind of opened up my just my view of the world in a lot of
ways that those of us who only ever learn one language might
not experience. So there was value to that and
(52:07):
obviously created a good foundation for what I went on to
do professionally for much longer.
So I, I can't imagine that I would have received or wanted a
managerial professional role from that first degree because
that was not in my plan. Actually, my original plan was
to be a Spanish teacher and I just, I just did not end up
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
job is one of the other things that's destroying the
educational system because that's not the only purpose of a
university education. So now I think we've got just
one last point to cover here, because I know we're we're
watching the time, but our last point here is the managerial
nature of universities. And this goes back into what you
(52:53):
mentioned at the beginning as well.
And I know there's some other points to talk about the
research excellence framework orthe REF, which is basically used
as the way to, I guess we could quantify the quality of the
research. And that then influences the
funding at universities. And it's very biased towards the
(53:14):
the Oxbridge universities, the Russell Griff Universities, the
highest universities in the UK system, because they obviously
have the most resources to create the best research
according to the research excellence framework.
I'll put a link in the write up so that people can read about
the REF. And in more recent years we've
had the teaching excellence framework as well or the TEF.
(53:35):
So then again, we're we're putting in these, these
somewhat, I don't know, dubious things that we have to reach.
I would say I don't even know how to describe them as to what
is considered research excellence or teaching
excellence. And if you don't meet those
requirements, at least at the research based universities
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
to four stars. You don't necessarily know who's
going to rate them or even why. But if you don't create the
right number of three star or 4 star publications within let's
say A7 year time periods or evenin a particular year, you have
(54:19):
the constant threat of being putinto a teaching only contract
and losing your research time that you worked so many years to
to to work work towards, which is quite demotivating for
someone. Do you have any other points you
want to cover on this, this managerial, sort of highly
measured approach to academia? Well, yeah.
(54:41):
And I would just add to corroborate what you're saying,
there was a research professor, I think it was at Imperial who
had a financial objective of bringing in 200, 1000 lbs.
And it didn't look as though he would attain that and he
committed suicide. You've probably heard about that
shocking case. So on the managerial front, and
(55:05):
I've alluded to this earlier, the the leadership is very top
down, managerial in style. And well, my goodness, I'm a
long way from those original universities.
Do you remember Universitas Scolari Omesh Magistruram, A
(55:26):
group of teachers and students? My goodness.
What we have now is an almighty edifice with a hierarchy
spanning vice chancellor, deputyvice chancellor, pro vice
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
what they write on their websiteand this happens to be Leeds
University, but I'm not singlingthem out.
They refer to the the existence there of a university executive
group new EG which comprises thevice chancellor and president,
(56:09):
Provost and deputy vice chancellor, pro vice
chancellors, executive Deans, chief operating officer, chief
financial officer, chief people and culture officer and the
university secretary and registrar.
And So what is the result of this top heavy management which
(56:31):
is pervasive in the university sector?
Well, according to Professor Peter Mandler, professor of
history at Cambridge, there is adramatically growing gap between
the senior management and their working colleagues.
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
the withdrawal of funding the withdrawal of government funding
such funding as there is a lot of it is going to finance these
extremely senior posts. Is this, is this what
universities today should look like and are they still worthy
(57:17):
of the title of university, remembering that it comes from
that Latin word really versatile, meaning a group, a
group of students and teachers. Is the function of this massive
hierarchy to impose control overthe teaching and research of
those involved in those activities?
(57:41):
Well, I think we mustn't be too negative.
I don't know that this system can be reformed in its current
state. It's down to us, I do think, to
create something better, something new.
And I don't think that what we're looking at here fulfils
(58:03):
the lofty ideals of Humboldt andGeorge Beadle at Chicago
University. And I think we need to return to
those ideals with a smaller institution.
I paved the way with Truth University.
If you're interested in helping with that initiative or studying
(58:24):
for research qualification, do get in touch.
www.truthuniversity.co.uk is thewebsite.
I think this is too far gone. That's the system and we need to
a bit like the French Impressionists, we need to start
(58:47):
afresh and they created new Salon for the French
Impressionists. The old salon were no longer
capable of identifying innovate innovation in the field of fine
art, so they started with some new salon.
Is that where we're at now, do you think, Diane?
I think so. And I guess it reminds me of
(59:10):
some of our UK column members who are always joking that those
of us on the UK column team could create a whole new
government. And they've already appointed me
as the education secretary, Brian Garish as Prime Minister,
Ben Rubin as finance minister and so on.
So we've, we've got a backup plan and really get to that
point. I'll just, I'll just leave that
(59:32):
are there. We're just about out of time,
unfortunately. Are there any other points that
you wanted to cover that we haven't been able to mention so
far? I'd like just to mention one on
the subject of humanities because it turns out both you
and I, I started off university with, with, with modern
languages. And I've covered this in, in
(59:54):
this book Light Bulb Moments andthe Power of Critical Thinking,
which I wrote with Catherine Armitage.
And you might You might hope that new graduates would excel
in critical thinking, but a survey by the OECDA Fast Survey
800,000 students discovered that.
(01:00:17):
Only 45% of new graduates had what they considered to be
critical thinking skills, but those students that were more
like most likely to have it out of the cohort of students that
they looked at would guess what from the humanities.
It's interesting point to to endon.
(01:00:38):
I think I wanted to say as well that we to let the audience know
that we have two more interviewsplanned with Gloria.
The next one will be with Ben Rubin and they will be talking
about some common interests thatthey have.
And then the third one will be back with me again, which will
be, I believe, a topic that willtotally shock and surprise a lot
(01:00:59):
of people that see what we have to cover in the third interview.
So just to conclude this first one, I, I just want to thank you
again, Gloria, for working so well with me on uncovering what
I think we will call a higher education in crisis for this
particular interview. And I really hope that the
(01:01:20):
British public will see this as much as possible so that they
know where their tax money is going and if they have young
people or people of any age attending universities in 2025,
what exactly they're being exposed to and, and what's going
on behind the scenes. And, and I really hope that this
will make people think about what they're doing and what they
(01:01:42):
will expect going forward from the British university system,
which of course is the oldest inthe world and, and known to be
the most reputable. And it's it's absolutely tragic
what has happened to the university system and to those
of us who are actually out for really seeking truth.
And so with that, I think I willleave it there.
(01:02:04):
This is again, Diane Rasmussen Mcaddy with UK Column News.
And Gloria, thank you again for joining me.
It was a pleasure to have you ontoday.
Thank you so much, Diane.
Hello everyone, this is Diane Rasmussen Mccaddy with UK column
News. I'm really happy today to be
joined by Professor Gloria Moss for what is going to be a very
important and hopefully interesting and revealing
discussion about the nature of universities in the UK as they
exist now in modern times. I've been working with Professor
(00:28):
Moss on a number of issues recently, including what's going
on in libraries with the children's books.
She's written a fabulous articlefor us recently for UK column
about the Fabians, and she's nowdoing a three-part series for us
on the idea of post truth in oursociety.
But today we're going to be focusing on universities.
So again, Gloria, welcome to UK column.
(00:51):
Do you want to maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and
your background and how you relate to the topic of
universities? Yeah, great to be back, Diane.
And in terms of myself, I'm a bit of a hybrid because I spent
some of my career in industry asa training person.
(01:11):
I've got an HR background, organizational psychology,
Improving organisations and the quality of the culture in
organisations has been a big priority in that part of my
life. And then I moved on to academia
in order to actually investigatecognitive sex differences.
(01:34):
Yeah, I did that at a time when the talk about androgyny was
looming on the horizon and I'd made a discovery and was very
keen to get that discovery whichcounted androgyny counted, the
whole notion that you can actually change your sex.
I was very keen to get that research through peer review.
(01:57):
And I, I did that and, and then I moved on to, to doing research
on this, this abiding interest of mine, healthy organisations,
how to turn toxic organisations into healthy ones.
And I focused on leadership and best practice leadership.
(02:19):
And all of that was in a mainstream British university.
And after I became a professor, I had more time to do this
research. I've written 80 peer reviewed
journal articles and conference papers and eight books.
(02:42):
After 2019, the university system, such as it was, was, was
didn't provide the hospitable environment in which I could
continue that work. So I now work independently.
I work as an independent researcher, but I know the
(03:05):
university system very well because I worked in it, the
mainstream university system, for many years.
And what we're going to do todayis talk about what, what is that
like that university system and is it fit for purpose?
You worked in the university system, Diane, and you're now
(03:26):
outside that system. Yes, absolutely.
It's really changed quite a bit and what for me seems like a
relatively short amount of time.When I started my PhD in went
through kind of the process of what was, you know, going
through the promotion process over 20 years and eventually
(03:47):
reaching full professor. I would say that when I started
my PhD, which was 2002 and finished in 2006 and got the
title of full professor startingin 2023 and then I was shortly
after. We're a race for my profession
for doing what I thought was what professors were supposed to
(04:08):
do, which is to question things.That's what I was taught I was
supposed to be doing when as a professor, especially as what I
achieved to be, you know, the intellectual top of my field in
terms of leadership and, and education and research.
And like you built a very large CV around my topic in
(04:29):
informatics and libraries. And it really just changed quite
a bit from when I got into the system in the beginning, which
of course started in America andthen I worked in Canada and then
came to the UK to work in 2015. In the very beginning, it was
sort of like find the questions that you want to ask.
You have the right to ask those questions and it's your
(04:51):
responsibility to to use the data that you gather to answer
those questions. But it just even, I think even
in the past few years for me andmaybe you have a different
perspective that changed quite significantly just in those
twenty years. So I guess it would be helpful
for our viewers to hear a littlebit about the background of
(05:13):
university, since we're kind of talking about the the modern
crisis university. So if you want to maybe go into
some of the background and the history of universities, I think
that would be helpful to start the conversation.
Yes, because as you say, even in, in in your lifetime, you've
seen major change. And if we look at the span of
history, then my goodness, there's major change.
(05:35):
And some of this is, is detailedin this book published by Truth
University Press entitled The Dark Side of Academia, How Truth
is Suppressed. And that's written by the Secret
professor. And there's a foreword from John
Hammer and then afterward from Doctor Tess Laurie.
(05:57):
So there you can read about the history of universities.
They they actually go back to 1088.
Bologna has the crown and students and teachers, quite
simple really would come together.
And that is where the the word university comes from, that the
(06:20):
title of these organisations wasin Latin Universitas Scholarium
A, a, a group of scholars and teachers.
And they were small groups. They were not the massive
edifices that you think of today, not at all.
(06:43):
And Oxford followed in quick succession in 1096.
Paris 11:50 And the rest is history, shall we say.
Originally those groups of scholars, well the scholars were
foreign nationals actually in inthose cities.
And would you believe it, the scholars, the students would
(07:05):
actually decide the academics salaries.
My goodness, how, how that's changed today as we see vice
chancellors on stratospheric salaries.
So the beginning was way back inthe 11th century and thinking on
(07:25):
universities of course, changed,you know, from from the original
Universita Scholarium at Magisterium, groups of scholars
and teachers, thinking changed. And when we reached the 18th,
19th century, an important figure von Humboldt in Germany,
(07:47):
he conceived of universities as a place for the cultivation of
the mind and character. And he saw university work as
being rooted in principles of neutrality and freedom from
ideological and private interests.
(08:10):
And maybe those listening to ourconversation would think that is
how universities remain as sort of neutral beacons of
enlightenment. Well, we'll, we'll find out
whether this is the case or not.But Humbok wasn't a lone voice,
shall we say? We could mention others, but I'd
(08:32):
like to single out a remarkable president of the University of
Chicago. He was actually the 7th
president, George Beadle. We're talking 1950s now.
He spoke about the importance ofthe quest for truth.
He was a high flying geneticist.He'd actually shared a Nobel
(08:54):
Prize in 1958 for his research into the role of genes in
regulating biochemical events within cells.
Listen to what this fine mind said, he said.
Quotes We 1 cannot search for truth with a closed mind or
(09:15):
without without the right to question or doubt at every
stage. Any injunction to close the
mind, to restrict one's beliefs arbitrarily or to accept on
authority without doubt violatesthe concepts of freedom of the
(09:35):
mind. And many of you will say that
this is your ideal of a university as well.
And many will say possibly that actually now we've come a very
long way away from the vision ofHumboldt and of George Eagle.
(09:58):
And this is what Diana and I aregoing to look at today.
Have we moved away? And if we have moved away from
the striking visions, what are the factors that are to blame?
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
mentioned earlier in her own career and the changes that
we've seen since the Universities of Humboldt.
And George Beadle. We all know the phrase he who
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
funding of British universities is concerned, and it will be a
similar story in many other countries as well.
What you'll see is a dramatic decline in government funding to
British universities. We see that between the years
(11:05):
2010 and 2022 to 3. These are figures from the
Commons library in parliament that government funding to
universities fell listen to thisfrom £16 billion to just £4
billion over that period of a little more than 10 years.
(11:28):
So the reality now is that government monies for teaching
in universities has reduced by amassive 75% and the budget for
teaching is now quarter what it was and reducing.
And government monies for research have reduced by the
(11:50):
same amount, 75% and have fallenfrom a high of £10 billion.
Now I'm not saying that government funding is
necessarily all fine and dandy, because of course government
funding, when I've looked at calls for research put out by
(12:10):
the research councils of Britainand other countries, that those
calls for research inviting academics to apply for
government monies, as you might have predicted, they're
following very much mainstream agendas.
Example the Economics and SocialScience Research Council, ESRC,
(12:34):
they've funded these projects inthe past, learning to like
robots, attracting internationalstudents who pay more fees than
national ones, how to attract them to the UK.
So we're not saying that government funding for research
is necessarily the panacea, but what we can say with certainty
(12:57):
is that now it the the volume offunding has dropped so
dramatically, the short form hasbeen made-up by private funding.
This is a table showing the monies going to universities
from two of the biggest funders of universities today worldwide.
(13:21):
And yeah, you've probably guessed it, it's the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and it's the Welcome Trust.
The Welcome Trust has has a massive £16 billion in its
coffers to offer to universitiesin the decade leading up to
2032. So how is this money being
(13:45):
spent? Well, if you look at the table,
you can see the Gates fund totalled a massive 11 billion, I
mean slightly less than the Welcome, but still very large,
which was offered to O471 universities worldwide in 66
(14:09):
countries. So you can see the impact that
Bill Gates funding is happening on universities worldwide.
Looking at Britain, Oxford was the biggest beneficiary of Gates
funding receiving a whopping $375 million over a four year
(14:31):
period, 2014 to 18. And as we move on in time,
Oxford received almost 10 million power, $1,000,000 for
research on vaccines in 2020, another almost $11 million for
(14:56):
improving understanding of COVIDand creating a what they call
therapeutic accelerator. And the Welcome Trust Co funded
that project. That last project, Cambridge has
also received Gates funding, notto the same amount as Oxford,
(15:21):
but but some of the money that they've received, they used to
fund GATE, what they call Gates scholars.
So we can kind of second guess the kind of research that those
Gates scholars might be doing. And note that Gates received,
even though he never completed his first degree, he received an
(15:44):
honorary doctorate from Cambridge University.
It always helps to have friends in high places, does it not,
Diane? And and we mustn't forget
Imperial, Who led the Clarion call during COVID times.
(16:05):
They received a massive $185 million from the Bill Gates
Foundation and 140,000 for modelling COVID.
And that was the model Ferguson,Professor Ferguson behind that
one that predicted 500,000 deaths, computer model which has
(16:29):
been which has been widely critiqued.
UCL University College London, high-ranking University 2019.
They received what close to $11 million for their research on
vaccines. Southampton University likewise
(16:49):
smaller sum, but for research onvaccines.
And, well, I didn't want to crowd out the table, but you
know, the theme continues. University of Exeter received
funding for examining the potential for BCG vaccination to
reduce the impact of COVID-19 inhealthcare.
(17:11):
Workers at Warwick University received nearly $14 million for
research, pressing the danger ofvariants.
So the universities were standing tall, shall we say,
behind the COVID narrative. And many of you will have heard
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
billion into $200 billion. And here we have the
university's complicit in this, courtesy of Bill Gates funding.
I don't know what you think of this DIA.
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,
which are obviously major funders, but it's also the also
the people who support the the research in terms of what needs
to happen in publications. Because obviously your research
gets funded based on a certain agenda.
And then if your research doesn't align with the
sustainable development Goals, for example, which you have to
(18:22):
indicate when you upload your research nowadays into
university systems, when your articles or your books get
published, then you're not actually able to put them into
the system. So if you haven't met SDG 7 or
13 or whichever 1 you think can relate to your research, then
the university doesn't want to even to see that you've you've
had it published. So that all of course relates to
(18:45):
the funding because if you can'tget it published and you don't
have any reason to get the funding.
And so it all has to work together.
So I think this then goes into, I guess the next issue of peer
review, right? So we all know potentially that
well, we know as academics that peer review has to happen to
make sure that supposedly it's reviewed by experts to me before
(19:09):
it gets published. But there are some issues of
corruption going on as well, I would say within peer review.
So I'll let you talk a little bit more about that.
Peer review is an absolute critical part of the academic
system, if not the linchpin of the whole system created by
Robert Maxwell in 1951. Yep, peer review didn't exist
(19:34):
before then with arguably highlyquestionable funding kick
starting the whole thing. And if you'd like to read more
about that, I published an article.
It's published on Principia Scientific website.
Just just Google my name and Robert Maxwell and you'll see
some information on this highly questionable funding.
(19:56):
And I suppose there are two big problems with peer review.
And I say that as somebody who'shad, you know, sort of up to 80
articles through peer review andI've acted as a reviewer on
editorial boards myself. But the two big problems really
(20:17):
are firstly, the very conservative nature of academic
journals. Conservative is a is a rather
kind. Word 2 articles in a highly
ranked journal have actually pointed this out.
Very fascinating this the the The journal is the Proceedings
(20:37):
of the National Academy of Sciences and the two articles
were published in 2021 and then again in 2024.
And the first of those articles in P Nas concluded that
innovative papers were more likely to be rejected and less
(20:58):
innovative articles. And the second article from 2024
in the same journal highlighted the fact that 3 elite medical
journals had desk rejected 12 ofthe 14 articles that had become
(21:18):
the most popular in their field.In other words, elite journals,
the top journals that academics in top institutions are
encouraged, black bludgeoned, you might say, to to publish in.
Are there not really to publish innovative work, but less
innovative work. And if I refer you to Kuhn, The
(21:45):
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Absolutely a
crucial book from the 1970s, Coon said that most research
done in universities is what he calls normal research, tinkering
around the edges of a paradigm. And Coon says that the system is
not really set up at all to shift paradigms.
(22:08):
It's just there to maintain existing paradigms.
And so it is with with mainstream journals.
So that's one problem. They're not geared up to to
being innovative at all. The second problem is the fact
that the whole process of selecting articles for peer
(22:28):
review publication is highly questionable and we haven't got
very long today. But if I just flag up three
issues, First is the arbitrary nature of the whole process of
peer review. And you don't need to take my
word for that. We've had editors in chief chief
(22:50):
like Robbie Fox from the BritishMedical Journal and Richard
Horton from another medical journal, this time The Lancet,
both vouching for the arbitrary nature whereby articles get
selected. Robbie Fox obviously had a sense
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
those that reach the bottom? And Richard Horton obviously
likes language. His his his his description of
the peer review process. He describes it as biased,
unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, and frequently
(23:34):
wrong. So you get their point.
Not only that, but these journals very often have their
own agendas and, and the best way of illustrating that is with
reference to something that Richard Horton, editor in chief,
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
activist. Yeah.
He's saying the journal should be selecting articles to fit
certain themes. And separately from that, he
said the journals need to Picking up on what Diane told us
just then, the journals need to follow United Nations
(24:20):
sustainability, sustainable development goals.
And the final problem, problem I'd like to draw your attention
to, which you may be less aware of, I don't know, is the problem
of plagiarism. Yep, it's been found that
several academics, many of them extremely senior, have been
(24:44):
guilty of the cardinal sin of plagiarism.
And if you look at the next table, you'll see some of the
main offenders noted down. So we've got institutions on the
left. Harvard, the number one
university in the US, their their fifth highest paid
(25:05):
professor, Francesca Gino, whoseresearch topic was honesty and
ethical behaviour was found to have falsified her data sets.
She's no longer employed by Harvard University and
Stamford's high up the pecking order in American universities.
The president no less, Mark Tessier Levine.
(25:29):
He had to resign in 2023 since he hadn't corrected errors
pointed out to him by the Journal and Harvard again their
Cancer Institute that at the Darna Farber Cancer Institute
has, I think this is still beinginvestigated, the amount of the
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
review, which is the linchpin. And it's the linchpin largely
because academic promotion recruitment is is very much
dependent on the number of journal articles that you have
(26:18):
to your credit. And every seven or eight years
in Britain, universities are subjected to a massive research
assessment exercise in which theacademic and peer review outputs
are are the main barometer, shall we say, of a university's
(26:40):
research excellence. Well, that's what they say.
And so can't stress too highly the importance, the important
place that peer review occupies in academia.
And if the system itself is opento abuse in the way that we've
said, you might question the very value of the academic
(27:04):
system in which that is placed. Third factor that might be
moving us away from the worthy ideals of George Beadle and
Humboldt. And that's the global focus that
we find in universities today. And there's another slide here
that illustrates this. The World Economic Forum, would
(27:25):
you believe, has grouped universities under its umbrella.
And this grouping of universities has called the
Global Universities Leaders Forum Gulf and well, you could
guess, I'm sure the universitiesthat are members of Gulf, the
so-called top universities in Britain, America and elsewhere.
(27:48):
What can we say when universities are captured by the
World Economic Forum? And it's insidious in Nvidia's
agendas. And not just that, but you can
find on the WF website an article written by a then very
(28:09):
senior Oxford academic Pro Vice Chancellor, External Affairs
co-authored by a professor at Queensland.
And this is 2020. I'm quoting from this book, The
Dark Side of Academia, page 149,just a very short extract from
(28:29):
these two professors article talking about the place of
teaching and research in universities.
They say that through their engagement, teaching and
research, universities must redouble their efforts to work
alongside corporations, governments and NGOs as they
search for new business models and policies to assist the Great
(28:55):
Reset. Well, we could really stop
there, couldn't we? With those three factors, we're
seeing the university system captured by private funding and
by global agendas. And we've reached a point where
you may have read about this. Last year, a lecturer at
(29:17):
University College London was removed from her module
leadership following complaints from Chinese students.
We make up now 25% of the student body at University
College London and they contribute not the 9000
something pounds that domestic students contribute, but a but a
(29:40):
weighty 40,000 lbs apiece. And the.
The crime of the lecturer it wasto highlight data from the
Global Slavery Index, which suggested that China had the
second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world.
And she was also labeled anti Chinese after catching 2 Chinese
(30:04):
students cheating in an exam. And her head of department at
University College London said It said that the university
needed to retain a good reputation among future Chinese
applications. So where is this taking us?
That's a good question. If I could just add in there as
(30:26):
well. I think my most recent
university experience is a little bit more recent than
yours since you left the system.And I would say that even
especially since 2020, there's been a major increase the number
of international students. And, and I think part of this
(30:47):
might be due to the funding issues that we're talking about
because to be attending a university, US university
university where in the West because of the amount that they
pay. And the other issue with that is
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
terms of their language requirements and in terms of
their preparation for high levelacademic work.
And so we get the money coming in, but we don't, we don't,
we're not creating good graduates.
So then actually what happens isthat the entire system erodes
(31:29):
because we're not producing goodresearch.
And the research that we are producing is trying to meet the
needs of the, the globalist demands that are placed on us
to, to meet the sustainable development goals or, or make
the World Economic Forum happy with us.
And then you, you lose the wholepoint of why you're doing this
work in the first place, which leads to our next point here,
(31:53):
which is academic freedom, right?
So one of the reasons that I lost my position in the system,
not that I'm sad about it anymore, but because I have this
wonderful platform now with UK column and I'm more than happy
to be here. But the issue that, but the
problem that is actually happening is that academic
(32:14):
freedom in general is just goingalong with us.
We cover frequently on UK columnissues of freedom of speech,
issues of, you know, what we're allowed to say and not say in
this entire society where it's one of those things supposed to
be very well protected in a university system.
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,
the issues of not putting pornographic material in front
of children and libraries, whichis obviously very important to
me, which I've covered extensively.
The problem is that one of the things that we've seen recently
that one of our UK column authors has uncovered, Hugh
(32:57):
McCarthy, is that the the UN andthe World Health Organization,
for example, believe that children should be treated as
sexual beings from birth. And that's now in globalist
policy. So if I speak out and say we
shouldn't be putting sex manualsin front of 6 year olds, that's
actually going against globalistpolicy, which is then funding
(33:19):
the university. So it's all in a big circle that
you can't get out of what you try to expose.
What's going on? So if you want to say anything
else about academic freedom, that that's just been one
example of what's happened to me, but I know it's happened to
a lot of others as well for for speaking out on different
issues. Well, exactly.
(33:40):
And I put a table together just highlighting some of the
academics who've been censored, ranging from Julie Poness,
Professor Julie Ponessen from the largest universities in
Canada. She refused to take the vaccine.
She was a professor of ethics. Do you believe it?
And she insisted on informed consent, as she should.
(34:02):
And she lost her job. And here in Britain, Professor
Chris Exley from Keele University, his focus was on the
harms of aluminium, including invaccines, not exclusively in
vaccines. And life became extremely
difficult for Professor Exley. And then in in America, Mark
(34:26):
Tikrzynski, molecular immunologist and actually
president at the time of Thomas Jefferson University, his crime
was liking a number of tweets that questioned the COVID
treatments, questioned what you were talking about there, Diane.
I think gender reassignment, bigpharma.
(34:48):
And so he lost his job. And there is an irony there
because Thomas Jefferson himselftalked, actually said, that
people cannot be safe without information.
And then there's the case of Professor Eve, whose story is
described in this book here, Professor of management and
(35:09):
marketing, whose work on best practice leadership was not
encouraged by her at university.In fact, she had a Commission to
write an article, one of the leading newspapers on education
in the world, and the universitytold her that she was not to
send that article on best practices leadership out.
(35:33):
It subsequently came to light inan e-mail that that that article
could have caused, in the view of the senior people of that
university, could have caused people to question the
leadership style and effectiveness of vice
chancellors Who we will get to this in a little bit, operate a
(35:56):
very, very top down leadership style.
I would say from my own background in organizational
psychology that this is worst practice leadership.
But a bit like you were saying down it, it does seem to be a
style, this very controlling style of leadership that is
being promoted by those pulling the strings.
(36:19):
So the Rockefeller Foundation produced a report in 2010
entitled Scenarios for the Future of Technology and
International Development, and it was, yeah, it was engaged in
a number of scenario plans. What that report of Rockefeller
(36:40):
predicted was a world of tightertop down government control, a
world of more authoritarian leadership because the report
says limited innovation was needed from the populations of
the world. So a professor, Professor E, who
(37:02):
promotes a very different type of leadership is not going to
find a natural home in a mainstream university.
So we're talking about the cancellation not just of people
who threaten the medical system or mainstream science, but
(37:25):
people who threaten the system for control that operates an art
in our world today. And according to somebody I
know, you know Diane Dennis Hayes, and this is the next
table, Professor emeritus now ofeducation, He was at Derby
University. Universities cannot really be
(37:47):
said to be universities unless they allow unrestricted freedom
of speech. And quite how restricted
speeches is difficult to get a handle on.
But there was a unique moment in2018 when a magazine Spiked
produced undertook a survey on free speech in universities and
(38:13):
you can see what they found on that table.
Quite shocking. This was a few years ago, it's
probably worse now. They found that 55% of
universities actively censor speech, 39% stifle speech
through excessive regulation, and the shocking conclusion was
(38:34):
that just 6% of universities aretruly free, open places.
I guess I would add in in there as well that I've been covering
on UK column the issue of the the current act that was passed
in 2023 that was meant to protect freedom of speech and
academic freedom and higher education.
(38:55):
When Bridget Phillipson first came into office as education
secretary last year, she halted it, saying, well, there's
potential and anti-Semitism and,and all these other things that
she was bringing in, saying thatwe needed to look at it to make
sure that there was no harm being done.
And it's now going through as ofthe 1st of August.
(39:16):
The Office of Students, Office for Students has provided some
guidance on how to do this. And unfortunately they've taken
away the tort reform that was going to be in there because you
can no longer sue for having your rights violated financially
because universities don't have the money to pay for it.
Think it was the University of Exeter recently that got fined.
(39:39):
It was 575,000 lbs for not following the academic freedom
principles for somebody. And I've I've also got an
interview with Professor Dennis Hayes on UK column, which
viewers can find if they want toget the full idea of academic
freedom from his perspective as well as representative from the
students for academics for academic freedom, which I did
(40:01):
late last year in 2024. So we can you can look at those
for more detail. The issues for students is that
there's the decolonization agenda.
Which is also very dangerous forprotecting basically the British
system of knowledge, all of the history in this country and in
(40:25):
any Western country where they're pushing this
decolonization agenda. So do you, do you want to talk
about that a little bit? As as we speak, libraries are
decolonizing the books in the inthose libraries.
Exeter University. If you want to see what's going
on, look no further than Exeter and the West Country.
(40:48):
They have a reading group discussing liberating the
library, what it means to decolonize, and well, you you
explained, I think I am that that often means removing books
written by Caucasians if you want to.
Learn more Sorry, I'm going to hold this up for the viewers.
(41:08):
This book called Narrative Expansion tell us exactly how
this is being done, interpretingdecolonization and academic
libraries. This is this is published by
SILLIP, which is my former professional body for library
and information professionals inthe UK, tells exactly how
they're doing it. And this is also happening not
(41:31):
just for libraries, but for curriculum as well.
A lot of subjects, probably all of the subjects now have
guidance and within their own universities of their own
professional bodies on how to decolonize the curriculum.
Which again, people are seeing that textbooks that they've used
for years for their students or for their research, like
(41:53):
disappearing from the library catalogs and from the the
collections because they were written by white people or
straight men or whatever the offense of the moment is.
And they're putting in this critical race theory.
We're also seeing that exams arebeing considered racist because
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
international students who are coming here and paying £40,000 a
year to get a British education.So we see a lot of things
happening around the academic freedom, but also this is also
causing our students to have problems because they can no
(42:37):
longer apparently handle hearingcertain curriculum points.
If it sounds too white or it's too offensive, then they get
triggered and they have safe spaces that they're allowed to
go to and and experience therapydogs so that they can calm down
and get a cup of tea. And I've covered this as well
and on new segments, but I thinkthat actually all does tie into
(42:58):
academic freedom because students are just no longer able
to handle it because they're coming in with expectations with
mental health issues with however they were affected
during the lock UPS that we wentthrough in 2020 and 2021.
So there's a lot of things goingon there.
And I think that leads us to ournext point, which is declining
academic standards, if you want to go into that next.
(43:22):
It does very much look as thoughthere's a massive decline in the
standards of marking that contribute to the degree
classification that students come away with.
And I've put together a table sothat showing this isn't a matter
(43:42):
of opinion, this is very much a matter of fact.
I focused here on on the Britishsituation.
So back in the year 1970, a first class degree were very
rarely awarded. If you were at Warwick
University, it was awarded to just 6% of the cohort.
(44:04):
Bath University, very similar, 8%, Cambridge slightly higher,
but we're well under the 15% mark.
Fast forward to the 1990s in Certainly that's the time that
Tony Blair introduced tuition fees towards the end of the
1990s and the average. Before the tuition fees was
(44:27):
introduced, the average proportion of students who were
awarded a first class degree wasjust 7%.
Then we get the advent of tuition fees and things start to
change. 2009 to 2010, these are average averages across Britain.
(44:48):
15% of students get first class degrees.
You can see the numbers, it's edging up all the time. 18% by
2000 and 1819 have reached 28 percent. 2000 and 1920 massive
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
1970s. In fact, the years before
tuition fees were introduced andwhat perhaps is not surprising
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
mainstream British universities,I, I was frequently told by
students that they expected to get a first class degree and
what do they need to do to get it?
So there was a presumption on their part.
And, and these weren't always, well, these might be in my view,
(46:04):
average students, but they were considering themselves as worthy
of top degrees. So something, something big has
happened in universities. And by the way, these figures
are just averages on the table. I believe that University
College London, the average figure there is about 50% of
(46:26):
student getting students gettingfirst class degrees, and it's
even higher in music colleges where it can reach the 80% mark.
There have been a couple of things again very recently that
have contributed to this being even worse.
One is the rise of AI. In my last year or so in the
system, I was seeing students submitting ChatGPT written work
(46:50):
and the university told me when I had suspicions that the
students didn't write their work.
I was told to just mark the workat face value because I had no
way to prove that the students didn't write the work.
It's not the same as if it's copied and pasted somewhere on
the Internet and we have plagiarism detecting software
that can find that this was published on another website
(47:10):
somewhere. When it's just kind of the
gibberish that ChatGPT writes, sometimes there's no way to
prove it. But one of the things that it
does do, that's one thing to look for if you are a lecturer
and you're watching this, is that it will sometimes create
fake references. So it will put together an
author's name, a journal title, an article name, and it doesn't
(47:33):
exist. So if you go to look for the
actual journal article and it's complete rubbish, that's a fake
reference. But then that takes a lot of
time to check all of that to make sure that they're using
real references. And you can also pay for
upgrades that students can buy to make sure that they're using
real references if they, if theywant to put some money behind
it. So there's all kinds of things
(47:54):
that are, that are going on in the background that are, that
are causing these issues with standards.
And again, the expectations, as you said, I even had parents
that called me when they were upset that they had, they had
spent money on their, their child's education and they
didn't get the marks that, that they thought that the children
deserved. And then they would get really
angry with me when I would say their GDPR rules.
(48:17):
They're over 18. I can't discuss this with you
because they saw themselves as the customer because they were
the ones paying the fees for their child to be there.
So it was very a very difficult position for me to be in as
especially when I was a programme director.
So I guess talking about finances, that brings us to our
next point, which is value for money universities.
(48:40):
Well, yeah, that that concept ofvalue for money was introduced
by the Higher Education ResearchAct 2017.
And my goodness, this has had major consequences for higher
education. I'll just highlight two here. 1
(49:01):
is the axing of many humanities courses and much humanities
research funding. So we're talking about the axing
of modern languages, English literature, history, and all in
the name of value for money because, well, this links to the
(49:24):
second point really, the targetshave been set for universities
in terms of the employability oftheir students, all under the
under this concept of value for money.
And one target is that 60% of graduates from a particular
(49:48):
university must have obtained managerial or professional
employment. And one view is that humanities
graduates may be less likely to help those universities hit
those targets then universities for more applied subjects were
that would stand to reason. And perhaps IT business,
(50:13):
science, medicine, this concept of value for money, at what cost
does it come? Philip Pullman, who's a
describes in chilling words the likely effects of the axing of
humanity's courses as being emotional, emotional and
(50:37):
imaginative starvation. And I speak as somebody who did
a first degree in, in modern languages and I basically spent
four years reading French poetryand plays and French novels.
And I think I'm, I benefited enormously from those four
(51:01):
years. I wouldn't have it any otherwise
really. And so this concept of value for
money, it's, it's leading to, I might say, a very impoverished
society in terms of culture and spirit.
I agree. My, my first degree was actually
(51:22):
in Spanish was, well, I kind of did Spanish and business and
computing. So I did a lot of reading of
Spanish poetry and, and Spanish literature and you know, the
history of at least the Spanish speaking world on across the
ponds in, in Mexico and South America and Central America.
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
language at that level. It made my, my English writing
better. It made my communication better,
kind of opened up my just my view of the world in a lot of
ways that those of us who only ever learn one language might
not experience. So there was value to that and
(52:07):
obviously created a good foundation for what I went on to
do professionally for much longer.
So I, I can't imagine that I would have received or wanted a
managerial professional role from that first degree because
that was not in my plan. Actually, my original plan was
to be a Spanish teacher and I just, I just did not end up
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
job is one of the other things that's destroying the
educational system because that's not the only purpose of a
university education. So now I think we've got just
one last point to cover here, because I know we're we're
watching the time, but our last point here is the managerial
nature of universities. And this goes back into what you
(52:53):
mentioned at the beginning as well.
And I know there's some other points to talk about the
research excellence framework orthe REF, which is basically used
as the way to, I guess we could quantify the quality of the
research. And that then influences the
funding at universities. And it's very biased towards the
(53:14):
the Oxbridge universities, the Russell Griff Universities, the
highest universities in the UK system, because they obviously
have the most resources to create the best research
according to the research excellence framework.
I'll put a link in the write up so that people can read about
the REF. And in more recent years we've
had the teaching excellence framework as well or the TEF.
(53:35):
So then again, we're we're putting in these, these
somewhat, I don't know, dubious things that we have to reach.
I would say I don't even know how to describe them as to what
is considered research excellence or teaching
excellence. And if you don't meet those
requirements, at least at the research based universities
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
to four stars. You don't necessarily know who's
going to rate them or even why. But if you don't create the
right number of three star or 4 star publications within let's
say A7 year time periods or evenin a particular year, you have
(54:19):
the constant threat of being putinto a teaching only contract
and losing your research time that you worked so many years to
to to work work towards, which is quite demotivating for
someone. Do you have any other points you
want to cover on this, this managerial, sort of highly
measured approach to academia? Well, yeah.
(54:41):
And I would just add to corroborate what you're saying,
there was a research professor, I think it was at Imperial who
had a financial objective of bringing in 200, 1000 lbs.
And it didn't look as though he would attain that and he
committed suicide. You've probably heard about that
shocking case. So on the managerial front, and
(55:05):
I've alluded to this earlier, the the leadership is very top
down, managerial in style. And well, my goodness, I'm a
long way from those original universities.
Do you remember Universitas Scolari Omesh Magistruram, A
(55:26):
group of teachers and students? My goodness.
What we have now is an almighty edifice with a hierarchy
spanning vice chancellor, deputyvice chancellor, pro vice
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
what they write on their websiteand this happens to be Leeds
University, but I'm not singlingthem out.
They refer to the the existence there of a university executive
group new EG which comprises thevice chancellor and president,
(56:09):
Provost and deputy vice chancellor, pro vice
chancellors, executive Deans, chief operating officer, chief
financial officer, chief people and culture officer and the
university secretary and registrar.
And So what is the result of this top heavy management which
(56:31):
is pervasive in the university sector?
Well, according to Professor Peter Mandler, professor of
history at Cambridge, there is adramatically growing gap between
the senior management and their working colleagues.
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
the withdrawal of funding the withdrawal of government funding
such funding as there is a lot of it is going to finance these
extremely senior posts. Is this, is this what
universities today should look like and are they still worthy
(57:17):
of the title of university, remembering that it comes from
that Latin word really versatile, meaning a group, a
group of students and teachers. Is the function of this massive
hierarchy to impose control overthe teaching and research of
those involved in those activities?
(57:41):
Well, I think we mustn't be too negative.
I don't know that this system can be reformed in its current
state. It's down to us, I do think, to
create something better, something new.
And I don't think that what we're looking at here fulfils
(58:03):
the lofty ideals of Humboldt andGeorge Beadle at Chicago
University. And I think we need to return to
those ideals with a smaller institution.
I paved the way with Truth University.
If you're interested in helping with that initiative or studying
(58:24):
for research qualification, do get in touch.
www.truthuniversity.co.uk is thewebsite.
I think this is too far gone. That's the system and we need to
a bit like the French Impressionists, we need to start
(58:47):
afresh and they created new Salon for the French
Impressionists. The old salon were no longer
capable of identifying innovate innovation in the field of fine
art, so they started with some new salon.
Is that where we're at now, do you think, Diane?
I think so. And I guess it reminds me of
(59:10):
some of our UK column members who are always joking that those
of us on the UK column team could create a whole new
government. And they've already appointed me
as the education secretary, Brian Garish as Prime Minister,
Ben Rubin as finance minister and so on.
So we've, we've got a backup plan and really get to that
point. I'll just, I'll just leave that
(59:32):
are there. We're just about out of time,
unfortunately. Are there any other points that
you wanted to cover that we haven't been able to mention so
far? I'd like just to mention one on
the subject of humanities because it turns out both you
and I, I started off university with, with, with modern
languages. And I've covered this in, in
(59:54):
this book Light Bulb Moments andthe Power of Critical Thinking,
which I wrote with Catherine Armitage.
And you might You might hope that new graduates would excel
in critical thinking, but a survey by the OECDA Fast Survey
800,000 students discovered that.
(01:00:17):
Only 45% of new graduates had what they considered to be
critical thinking skills, but those students that were more
like most likely to have it out of the cohort of students that
they looked at would guess what from the humanities.
It's interesting point to to endon.
(01:00:38):
I think I wanted to say as well that we to let the audience know
that we have two more interviewsplanned with Gloria.
The next one will be with Ben Rubin and they will be talking
about some common interests thatthey have.
And then the third one will be back with me again, which will
be, I believe, a topic that willtotally shock and surprise a lot
(01:00:59):
of people that see what we have to cover in the third interview.
So just to conclude this first one, I, I just want to thank you
again, Gloria, for working so well with me on uncovering what
I think we will call a higher education in crisis for this
particular interview. And I really hope that the
(01:01:20):
British public will see this as much as possible so that they
know where their tax money is going and if they have young
people or people of any age attending universities in 2025,
what exactly they're being exposed to and, and what's going
on behind the scenes. And, and I really hope that this
will make people think about what they're doing and what they
(01:01:42):
will expect going forward from the British university system,
which of course is the oldest inthe world and, and known to be
the most reputable. And it's it's absolutely tragic
what has happened to the university system and to those
of us who are actually out for really seeking truth.
And so with that, I think I willleave it there.
(01:02:04):
This is again, Diane Rasmussen Mcaddy with UK Column News.
And Gloria, thank you again for joining me.
It was a pleasure to have you ontoday.
Thank you so much, Diane.
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