The week in higher education – 13 October 2022

England’s skills minister Andrea Jenkyns – whose portfolio covers universities – has made little attempt to hide her feelings for higher education, stating that the “current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies than the apprenticeships shaping construction”. When not learning about Potter and his pals, university students were being fed a diet of “critical race theory, anti-British history and sociological Marxism”, she told the Tory party conference. Ms Jenkyns’ views on the attractiveness of tertiary education seem to have changed dramatically since 2014, when she described her own degree from the University of Lincoln (a 2:1 in international relations) as the fulfilment of a “lifelong dream”. “If I can do it, anyone can; it’s never too late,” she added as a 40-year-old prospective MP. Her dismissive attitudes towards the sector certainly seem a long way from those of previous Tory education ministers who, even two years ago, were championing the importance of more graduates to a high-skilled economy.

PhD students in Romania forced by the government to take mandatory ethics training may be smiling wryly after the country’s education minister was forced to quit for having plagiarised. Sorin Cîmpeanu, a former university rector, announced this month that he was stepping down after having claimed credit for 13 chapters published by two colleagues, for which he changed just five words in their titles. He later shared a post from his former doctoral supervisor, Ioan Pleșa, who said Professor Cîmpeanu had displayed “impeccable professional and moral conduct”. His departure followed allegations by the investigative journalist Emilia Sercan, also a University of Bucharest academic, who has previously exposed plagiarism by two Romanian prime ministers, two former internal affairs ministers, two former defence ministers, a health minister and an education minister, among others.

“The First Date Course”, in which a professor assisted by a “team of 50 beautiful, intelligent women from around the world” schools singletons in seduction, sounds like a pitch for a trashy reality television show. It is, in fact, the brainchild of evolutionary psychologist David Buss – a professor at the University of Texas at Austin – whose online instruction classes on “human mating strategies” were not well received by academia, at least. As several female faculty commented, his decision to rope in “models and influencers”, “NBA and NFL cheerleaders”, “PhDs” and “many more high-value women” sounded very much like the creepy “pick-up artist” manuals so popular in the pre-MeToo era.

The road to 2.4 per cent – the proportion of gross domestic product that ministers wanted the UK to spend on research and development annually – was meant to be long, winding and probably ending (with luck) in 2027. In fact, there was an easier way: thanks to an accounting tweak by the Office for National Statistics that added £16 billion to the ledger, it turns out that the once-totemic target was achieved in 2020. “It isn’t so much that we’ve found this money down the back of the sofa, more that it wasn’t showing up in our bank account,” commented Lord Willetts, the former science minister who championed what he thought was a challenging long-term target. There are now calls for a new target of 3.5 per cent – close to US or German levels – that will trigger the R&D-rich, high-productivity economy that 2.4 per cent was meant to deliver. A good idea, or another opportunity for another serendipitous “methodological improvement”?

Racking up hefty year-on-year losses Twitter-style might be acceptable for tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, but not so much in Milton Keynes. After FutureLearn registered a £13.9 million loss in its recent 2019-20 accounts, the UK Mooc platform has said it is parting ways with the Open University, its founder. Launched in 2012 in partnership with 12 universities, FutureLearn currently partners with more than 260 universities, brands and government departments and has 18 million learners on its books, but it has struggled to turn a profit – much like its bigger US rivals, edX and Coursera. After selling a 50 per cent stake to Australian education provider SEEK in 2019, the OU is looking to offload its remaining assets, it said. Whether a generous Elon Musk-esque buyer will emerge to keep FutureLearn – which is also significantly reducing its expenditures – and the UK Mooc dream alive in the face of ferocious international edtech competition is currently uncertain.