Can we still look to mainstream universities to tell the truth?
Contents:
1.University League Tables: built on sand and forcing conformity?
2.The globalist agenda: alive and well at Cambridge University
3.The Woke agenda: an abiding force in universities
4.Dodgy money: fresh revelations concerning universities’ links with Gates and Epstein
5. Our plans and how you can help
1. University League Tables: built on sand and forcing conformity?
Who has not heard of university league tables? Well, the Office for Students in the UK manages the National Student Survey (NSS) that feeds into these, being an element that according to the Office for Students constitutes ‘a key component of the quality assurance and wider regulatory landscape in UK higher education’.
The survey is one of the largest surveys of its kind globally and encompasses satisfaction with eaching quality, assessment and feedback and course organisation and management.
This is ‘innate satisfaction’, an element that accounts for 24% of the student-satisfaction scores in the NSS and other student surveys. This finding comes from the peer-reviewed journal ‘Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education’.
The study by a team from the University of Bath suggests that over half of student satisfaction is attributable to unalterable individual-level personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion and others, rather than the actual quality of received education.
The paper’s finding are based on data from 409 students studying at 63 universities across 20 countries, cast doubt on the credibility and usefulness to students, their parents, universities and governments of simple student satisfaction scores that fail to control for trait happiness and other inherited personality characteristics.
However, these two erroneous
assumptions directly contradict extensive satisfaction research in job, consumption and other domains that consistently finds levels of satisfaction with most things largely reflects inherited and unalterable personality traits especially innate happiness.
Consequently, satisfaction levels tend not to be susceptible to alteration by any objective change in, say, a job or consumed product.
That so much assessed student satisfaction stems not from extrinsic educational experience but from intrinsic personality traits (eg innate happiness) that cannot be altered by ministers,
university administrators or academic staff highlights a major deficiency in league tables.
As if this were not bad enough, a further problem has been brought to the fore by the European University Association (EUA) in October. The EUA represents more than 800 universities across Europe and in a paper published in October 203 it identifies t hree problems concerning rankings.
Reference: Phua, Florence, T.T. Dericks, Gerard Thompson, Edmund R & Enders, Jurgen (2023), (E-pub ahead of print), Are satisfied students simply happy people in the first place? The role of trait affect in students satisfaction, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 18 July
2. The globalist agenda: alive and well at Cambridge University
On 2 October, Cambridge University’s new Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice, gave her first address to the Senate House on 2 October 2023. She has said that she will encourage more free speech but how square this with the request to dons in October to report books that might be “offensive”, “harmful” or “problematic”?
How reconcile her avowed support of free speech with her record of clamping down on freedoms at Princeton? And with the paradigm-preserving nature of her own research? Why do we describe it in this way?
Well, one of Professor Prentice’s principle areas of research appears to be within the field of Gender Stereotypes, with a paper in 2002 concluding that the findings of her co-authored study are ‘consistent with numerous research demonstrations of the persistence of traditional, prescriptive gender stereotypes’.
So, other than presenting a dazzling array of statistical details, how does this advance us? For example, there is no mention of biology and how the stereotypes mentioned in the article may have their roots in biology and actually serve human society rather well.
Were we to, for example, press for Best Practice leadership, then those traits considered to be stereotypically female (nurturing, and concern for others) would be prioritised and women
would be much valued as managers and senior leaders. Only Worst Practice ‘Transactional’ leadership, a style involving ‘management by exception’ in which people are ignored until things go awry, rests on attributes that may be described as stereotypically male.
Moreover, you might expect an impressive publication record from a Cambridge V-C whereas, in an article from September 2023 in Forbes Magazine , Prentice is described as the author of ‘more than fifty articles and book chapters’.
If you compare this output with that of philosopher Professor Zizek, with over fifty books and hundreds of articles and papers to his name, one is slightly underwhelmed. Why then the appointment?
Prentice has spoken of the ‘great opportunities to demonstrate how our leading universities can together harness their expertise to solve global problems’ so could it be that her track record at Yale, Stanford and Princeton qualifies her as the globalists’ placeman (whoops, woman)?
No surprises there since the previous incumbent, Professor Stephen Toope had been Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, a post that he resumed following his exit from Cambridge.
A sense of the values underpinning the Munk School can be gauged from itsMaster in Global Affairs programmewhich includes, the World Bank as a student research partner; and Sustainability in the World’ and ‘Immigrationand Pluralism Studies‘ as options.
What is more, Professor Toope attracted funding fromChina, with his overtures to Chinese officials early on in his time at Cambridge – whetherdiplomats or academics – attracting widespread criticism, both in Canada and in Cambridge
Of course, the fact that Cambridge courted global funding was nothing new. In 2009, the university awarded Bill Gates an Honorary doctorate in Law, a ‘thank you’ perhaps for his gift to Cambridge of US$210m (c,£170m) in 2000, the largest single donation made to a UK university.
This has funded their ‘Gates scholars’ and you could well ask as to the extent to which existing paradigms will be called into question in their research. The same might be said of other institutions receiving his monies (see the section concerning ‘Dodgy money’ below), with Harvard University also bestowed beating Cambridge by two years in their award to him of an Honorary doctorate 2007.
That, incidentally, is not without a touch of irony since Gates left Harvard without having completed his first degree.
So, Cambridge’s new Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice, is now tied to an institution with a strong global pedigree. When she speaks therefore of introducing greater freedom into the discourse of students, this is likely to fall within strict parameters, and will not invite discussion on the causes of wars, Covid, and ‘hot’ topics like these.
Meanwhile, recalling the links that ‘top’ universities have to the World Economic Forum (WEF) – a matter discussed in our first newsletter – you can be sure that the top job at Cambridge will not go the way of a freedom-loving, anti-globalist.
3. The Woke agenda: an abiding force in universities
‘Over the past several decades, institutions of higher education have been steadily adopting more and more ideas and practices destined …..to transform them, the goal being greater diversity, inclusion and equity.’
In the UK, in the same month, Michelle Donelan, the country’s secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, told a party conference that the government would protect scientific research “from the denial of biology,” claiming that scientists are being “told by university bureaucrats that they cannot ask legitimate research questions about biological sex.”
In response, over 2,000 UK scientists signed an open letter denouncing Donelan’s comments on the basis that they “do not reflect the view of UK scientists.” The letter quoted the 0.5 percent of the population that do not identify with the sex registered at birth, and that, there are a total of 1.5 million people in the UK that combine DSD, intersex, non-binary and trans characteristics and that the effect of the government’s views would be to exclude these from being the subject of research in biomedical, sports science and other research.
This letter ignores the fact that the totality of non-binary groups represents a minority when compared to the population as a whole, for whom the minister’s comments still stand. Notwithstanding this, a large element in UK academia are resistant to discussion of biological gender.
This is unfortunate since there is a great deal of relevant science concerning the manifestations of biological sex across the five senses as well as in medical symptoms and reactions to medications, discussed in this article by Gloria Moss from May 2023.
Note that the signatories to the letter span the range of universities in the UK, from Oxbridge, Imperial College, to newer universities, and many signatories offer their pronouns (he/him; she/her) alongside their name. All this in a month when the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee, signed an executive order outlawing vocabulary that includes woke and anti-women words.
Race is arguably another hot topic. At Queensland University in the summer, the university was forced under pressure from students to withdraw a ‘white privilege’ assessment from its medical degree.
Meanwhile, a t Florida State University, criminology professor Eric Stewart was dismissed in September 2023 following almost 20 years of service and allegations of research misconduct. These claims led to the retraction of six studies conducted by Stewart, all published in major academic journals between 2003 and 2019 and supported by research funding of over $3.5m.
The articles covered topics such as racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, public perceptions of minority communities, and the relationship between incarceration and various social factors.
One retracted study from 2019 suggested a link between historical lynchings and white people’s perceptions of black individuals as threats. Another from 2018 explored how white Americans viewed black and Latino individuals as “criminal threats.”
A 2015 study claimed that Americans wanted harsher sentences for Latinos due to their increasing population and economic success.
The lessons? Education must free itself from woke agendas and explore objective truths.
4. Dodgy money: fresh revelations concerning universities’ links with Gates and Epstein
In October 2023, some disturbing findings came to light concerning the links between a Principal of the American, Bard College and Epstein, the notorious sex offender. The Principal, Leon Botstein allegedly scheduled two dozen meetings with Epstein over the period during which new documentation came to light, and claims that the meetings were motivated by the fact that he was an ‘unsuccessful fundraiser’.
Does this exonerate him? Well, Bard College has the stated aim of seeking to “inspire a love of learning, idealism, and a commitment to the link between higher education and civic participation”.
Mention of “idealism” in the context of Epstein-originated funding sounds a jarring note and begs the wider question as to the ethics of funding sources more generally. For example, we mentioned in the second news item that Cambridge was the recipient of $210 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and we can justifiably ask whether Cambridge and other institutions receiving money from this source are ethically tainted.
The scale of the funding? Since 2020, Gates has disbursed over $11.6bn in funding to 471 universities and higher education institutions in 66 countries in 2010-2020. This constitute around 17 percent of Gates giving and universities in the US, Europe and Asia are all implicated.
Here is an extract from a report with details:
- The University Washington in Seattle is the biggest beneficiary, receiving 13 percent of all giving to higher education institutions. Between 2010-19, it received over $1.56bn from the Gates Foundation.
- The top five university beneficiaries are University of Washington ($1.56bn), John Hopkins University ($1bn), Emory University ($522m), University of California, San Francisco ($410m) and University of Oxford ($375m).
- Seven out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US universities. The biggest non-US beneficiary is Oxford University followed. by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($344m) and the University of Manitoba ($281m). Regionally, North American universities are the biggest recipient of Gates Foundation funding. 188 institutions received 72 percent of giving. Giving to US universities is increasing.
- European universities are the second biggest group of beneficiaries, receiving around 16 percent of Gates university-giving between 2010-19. Funding is heavily skewed to the UK. 109 European universities received $2bn. The UK is the biggest beneficiary with $1.4bn disbursed to 43 UK universities.
- The five biggest European beneficiaries scooped $1.1bn in Gates funding, 53 percent of all European university giving. They are Oxford ($375m), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($335m), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine ($140m), the University of Greenwich ($118m) and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.
- 104 European universities shared the outstanding $956m of Gates funding.
- Seven out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US universities. The biggest non-US beneficiary is the University of Oxford, followed by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ($344m) and the University of Manitoba ($281m).
- Asian universities are the third biggest regional beneficiary, receiving five percent of Gates university funding in the past decade. Giving to Asian universities has risen by 800% between 2010 and 2019. 57 Asian institutions received $555m in funding.
And it goes on:
- African universities received four percent of Gates giving. 58 institutions in 19 countries were awarded $444m over the decade. Giving to African universities has grown by 125 percent over the decade.
- 25 Australasian universities received $186m over the decade. Most of the funding is for neglected tropical diseases.
- Giving to the Middle East & North Africa is modest: $29m was shared between nine universities. Israeli institutions were the biggest beneficiaries receiving $19m.
- Latin American universities received the smallest sums. $24m was awarded to 24 universities. Giving to Latin American institutions has been in decline since 2013.
The take-away? A little under 500 universities globally are in receipt of Gates funding, meaning that the sector is tarnished with what some might regard as tainted money, given the extensive harm caused by many of the Gates-backed vaccines.
The world of finance has spawned the concept of ethical investing and perhaps universities upholding ethical values need to shun sources that could be regarded as tainted.
Arguably, this would include government funding as well given the complicity of governments around in the world in the funding of questionable activities.
This opens up a space for universities that can pride themselves on ethical sources of funding.
5. Joining the education revolution is easy since you will find a community of like-minded people at Truth University – and can read here on some of the ways of joining in.
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Wisenox
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Depends on what side of society you’re on. If you’re an insider, you will get different information than non-insiders. They don’t like regular people.
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Joe
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All Universities are pure EVIL. 100% lies about everything!
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