The week in higher education – 27 April 2023

Psychedelics and universities have gone together for decades, so it was high time that relationship was formalised. The University of Exeter is launching one of the world’s first postgraduate qualifications that will teach about using psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and other psychoactive drugs in therapeutic work. The programme, which will be called Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine, and Culture, is targeted at healthcare workers and therapists. “As the world wakes up to the potential for psychedelics to be an important part of the toolkit to treat some of our most damaging mental health conditions, it’s vital that we’re training the workforce to meet the demand,” said Celia Morgan, who will co-lead the programme. Seems infinitely sensible but will no doubt raise a few eyebrows among those who thought students studying the comparatively tame subject of Harry Potter was the root of all that is wrong with the world.

In recent years, smartphones have been blamed for increased road deaths, head lice, poor mental health, decreased memory, isolation and a decline in sex drive – among many other things. Luckily a new pilot programme at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio is set to rid these ghastly – yet surprisingly useful – devices from their students’ lives. Scholarships are on offer for those who ditch their smartphones for the four years they study at the institution to better connect with prayer, religion and each other. Lauren Green, chief religion correspondent for the Fox News Channel, claimed that one young student taking part in the programme had already cured her depression, and that others were going to “change the world” because of the initiative. And you can believe everything they say on Fox News.

The weekly airing of the Office for Students’ dirty laundry in the House of Lords has continued, with former members of the English regulator’s student panel appearing in front of the inquiry set up to investigate its work. Despite the clue very much being in the name, the two claimed that the OfS was not really for students at all, more the government ministers who bombard it weekly with directives about freedom of speech. However, the ex-student representatives – Francesco Masala and Martha Longdon – said their own free speech did not seem high up the priorities of the organisation, alleging that the panel was subjected to “veiled” threats that its existence might be “reassessed” if they continued to talk about things the OfS did not see as priorities, such as inclusive curricula. Student engagement, it seems, is really useful only when they say exactly what it is you want them to say.

While England has banned the advertising and selling of academic essays to students, with varying results, companies that ply this trade still happily exist in other parts of the UK undeterred. A central feature of such sites is their bold – often poorly spelled – claims about how their products are “100 per cent plagiarism-free” or will help students “climb the ladder of success”. Sometimes this is tempered with a disclaimer that the essay should not be passed off as a student’s own, but rarely are such companies challenged. That changed this month when the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority ordered several websites to remove adverts that it said implied that students could buy essays online and submit them to their institutions risk-free. The ASA ruled that the companies’ adverts were misleading because “students who committed plagiarism could face expulsion from their institution”. Being kicked out is an unusual rung on most people’s ladder of success.

Recent years have seen an acceleration of sports cars being fuelled by green energy, as motoring enthusiasts seek to steer away from fossil fuels. One University of Cambridge academic perhaps misunderstood the movement. Ehsan Abdi-Jalebi, 42, formerly at Churchill College, fraudulently claimed more than £2 million in government green energy grants to fund his lavish lifestyle, including purchasing a Maserati sports car, The Times reported. Abdi-Jalebi, who was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2018 after admitting 13 counts of forgery but was released in December 2020, has now been forced to pay back £1 million. The former engineering student developed a wind turbine firm called Wind Technologies in 2006, and received more than £1.3 million in renewable energy grants from the government and the European Union. Abdi-Jalebi lied on the applications, claiming that the cash was for funding research, and used affiliate companies to duplicate applications.