Degrees of failure: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and David Butterfield on the coddling of students

Are universities still a place full of rigorous academic challenge? In The Spectator’s cover piece this week, David Butterfield argues that managed decline in higher education is betraying students. He recently resigned from Cambridge after 21 years of teaching, after witnessing what he describes as the character of university being subverted from within. He joins Cindy Yu to discuss, alongside Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writer and human rights activist.

// SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPECTATOR
Get 12 issues for £12, plus a free £20 John Lewis/Waitrose voucher

// FREE PODCASTS FROM THE SPECTATOR
Hear more from The Spectator's journalists on their podcasts, covering everything from the politics of the UK, US and China, to religion, literature, lifestyle and more.

// FOLLOW US

[johnsmith]

"Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky.

[jasongauthier]

I really appreciate Ayaan Hirsi Ali's point that this is NOT a generational problem. I am very tired of being told 'the kids are just too sensitive these days!' No - someone older coddled them. Someone older enabled it. And when a responsible adult tried to tell them to grow up, another adult told them they were being too harsh. Every generation had students like this. It used to be dealt with differently. What has changed is the response from leadership in our institutions.

[g.p]

Crazy- You can’t be a pilot with poor eyesight, so why can’t Cambridge say “if you can’t write an essay every week you can’t have a place?” Problem solved.

[gemox]

I have anxiety. Anxiety doesn't mean that you can't write essays. That's ridiculous. If they can't write an essay, this means that you shouldn't be able to graduate from Cambridge. On another note, all of these conversations about the corruption of Academia should have and could have taken place 30 or 40 years ago. All of these scholars are not as with it as they are claiming. They were probably a part of the corruption for many years. I remember the rampant corruption already being present in the 1980s when I entered graduate school.

[iceman]

When we are all deemed special then none of us is special.

[cmmndrblu]

I went to university in the early 2000s. I went to regular state school, and managed to talk my way into a desireable uni studying classics, I changed my degree to languages- I had depression and nearly left but then came back and did the work I had outstanding. I did the work - but I had been given extended time to do so because I was not well- had I not been given that time I would have floundered. I am grateful for that element of compassion in the system. At the same time, in the classes of my final year, there were people complaining in one class about a topic which I had done the reading for. And I remember being astonished that the expectation from other students was that they could pass the course without reading or writing the essays.
So I think there is an area of legitimate leniency, but the academic standards themselves should not be compromised.

[MatthewWM]

If students cannot write essays, they shouldn't be allowed to continue the course. If they have a mental health issue that prevents them from from doing so, that is how it is.

[BobSmith-fxsz]

Pushing more students through universities means less demands are put on those students.

[secondchance]

“Alas, higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue, or higher political wisdom.” - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

[lightsabre]

This problem is not restricted to Cambridge alone. I work at another major UK university and “student experience” is pretty much the only thing that we in the faculty keep hearing about day in and day out.

I work in a STEM faculty and I have seen projects being watered down, exams becoming easier, and students coming up with nonsensical excuses for not turning in assignments or showing up for exams which the Uni readily accepts. All in the name of “student experience” and mental well-being.

[yogiyogesh-vhzx]

Bravo 👏🏾 to David Butterfield, wishing you every good luck and successes in your new posting .

[marieparker]

It's actually a physical relief to hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali describing the situation so exactly.

[claireevelyn]

The exact reasons why I decided to skip university all together. I has been told to think. And when our syllabus was cut in half as some people were finding it too difficult. I am sorry if you cant read a book in a week - you shouldn't be at uni.

[stephfoxwell]

No. University now merely imparts sufficient self esteem for for young people to assert their ignorance with confidence.

[saunderspeter]

Unfortunately, I think David is right about impact of fees. I used to be a uni professor. I thought fees would make students press for better tuition, but all they did was make students press for higher grades.

[rholmes]

I taught at a grammar school which is still rated as one of the best in the country and later in a public school also so rated. I then moved into a very innovative polytechic in 1973 which launched an applied language degree :Law, Economics and Politics taught in French, German, Spanish or Russian. Another course was European Studies teaching Politics, Economics, Law plus a foreign language. We were the first to use computer aided language learning. We recruited students who would otherwise chosen the standard universities.
Our graduates secured very good jobs including in finance and the EU but then the universities took note and copied our courses so the students with the A, B, C Alevels disappeared and we were recruiting D, E, C students .Result degree result inflation and the degrees worthless. Happily took early retirement and went back to teach Economics and French in excellent grammar schools. The university system is now a supermarket where the all that matters is sell the product even when rubbish

[peterweston]

I studied Chemistry at UCL about 150 years ago. I was way out of my depth most of the time. Anxious really did represent how I felt most of the time sh*t scared would be a better description. At the same time, and it sounds like a cliche, without that experience my whole life, I think would have been very dull, very mundane and altogether less fulfilled. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

[roro-mmcc]

The difference with China though is that their education really IS incredibly rigorous and hardcore. I visited a school where dorm rooms had a speaker that would alarm the students at 6am to start the school day and blare announcements in Chinese for 30mins. The academic competition there is off the scale.

[nuqwestr]

American infection in UK. Started in the 1980s when kids sports stopped keeping score and giving trophies for just participation. 2nd Wave Feminism and "mommy talk" now all pervasive, even in our Presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

[kingclover]

We've lowered the standards so much in order to accommodate certain groups of people that the universities are adopting all the characteristics of those people.