The week in higher education – 31 August 2023

In the 1973 Pink Floyd hit Brain Damage, the band’s frontman, Roger Waters, sings that “the lunatic is on the grass” and that we have “got to keep the loonies on the path”, supposedly a reference to the signs that dot the King’s College lawn in Cambridge, where the singer was raised. Fifty years later and this very same grass has been cast into the spotlight again, as the centrepiece of an online spat over collegiate entitlements, The Daily Telegraph reported. Charlotte Proudman, a barrister, shared a photo of herself posing on the prohibited grass on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter.) She said a white male student told her she’d be chucked out if caught, which she responded to by “sharply” telling him, “I belong here; my portrait hangs in the college chapel.” As she has a doctorate from King’s, the rules mean she is indeed allowed to pose on the lawn, whereas others cannot. The post provoked plenty of online noise, leaving many no doubt longing for the tranquillity of the dark side of the moon.

New Haven is known more for its historic harbour and Ivy League university than its gritty underbelly, but every city has its problems, even in Connecticut. Although crime rates are slightly higher than the national average, they’re probably not bad enough to justify the “survival guide” leaflet distributed to Yale University freshmen by a local police union. Featuring tips like “stay off the streets after 8pm” and “remain on campus”, the literature, which was illustrated with the head of the Grim Reaper, comes amid contract negotiations between the university and its campus police, Inside Higher Ed noted. The materials might have somewhat soured the mood on move-in day, judging by a statement from Yale that said it “supports the right of union members to rally peacefully” but felt that “today’s leafleting…ran counter to the spirit of the day”. Better safe than sorry, though.

University budgets worldwide are being squeezed by inflation, as these pages have reported. The pinch is clearly being felt worse in Germany, a country long known for its somewhat parsimonious attitude. Peter Sarris, a professor of medieval and Byzantine studies at Cambridge, tweeted (Xed?) that an unnamed German university recently double-paid him some travel expenses. “Accordingly, I repaid the second payment – giving them in £ exactly what I received in £. They are now asking for more to make up for what they have lost in currency fluctuations etc. What a cheek!” he said. Pedantry, of course, knows no borders. But the rules of national stereotyping state that someone must of course top the table and, judging by the joyful responses to Professor Sarris’ post, many were pleased to have their preconceptions about Teutonic tight-fistedness confirmed.

UK universities might have long given up on the idea that politicians should talk up the country’s multibillion-pound success story. But as thousands made their choices about whether to go to university, the country’s lawmakers seem to have been doing their best to question the value of education entirely. Witness Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who told The Daily Telegraph: “If I were a student today, I wouldn’t be able to go” due to not being able to afford it. This was despite – as Nick Hillman, the Higher Education Policy Institute director, pointed out – the value of maintenance support when Sir Keir studied law at Leeds in the early 1980s being around half what it is now, in real terms. Not that anyone should care anyway, if you listen to current education secretary Gillian Keegan, who cheerfully told students receiving A-level results that their grades would be irrelevant in 10 years’ time. “After a period of time, they don’t even ask you what you did at university,” she told Sky News. With friends like these…

Proof that one’s time at university can leave a lasting impact came at the University of Adelaide, however. During a restoration of the historic reading room, considered to be one of the most beautiful libraries in Australia, staff uncovered a fleet of paper planes flown by distracted students that had fallen into the nooks and crannies of the building – some more than three decades old, the university announced in a press release. A total of 61 paper planes were retrieved from various locations around the ceiling of the reading room. “They were found on the ledges and windowsills and there was even one lodged vertically in the ceiling plaster, which would have been a tough shot,” said university librarian Siân Woolcock.