Universities Are In Need Of Fundamental Reform
I recently had the opportunity to sit down in person with Professor Norman Fenton, a mathematician, statistician and computer scientist who has spent decades working in higher education
Having recently retired from full-time academic life, Professor Fenton is particularly well placed to reflect on how universities have changed over the course of his career.
Our discussion raised some important questions, and identified some serious concerns.
The implication of these concerns has a much broader application than simply the internal environment of a university. As students are conditioned into a particular form of narrative this becomes internalised and accepted as established wisdom.
As the students go onto to graduate and take jobs in the institutions of state, the effects of their university experience influence decisions they make in their professional lives. As time goes on graduates are promoted into very senior positions and are able to have wide raging powers.
Are universities still places where competing ideas can be openly debated? Are students being encouraged to think independently? Has the pressure to publish research diminished the importance of teaching?
And to what extent have political and ideological considerations influenced academic appointments and institutional policies?
Professor Fenton believes the changes have been profound, and largely detrimental. His assessment is uncompromising and the underlying questions raised deserve serious consideration.
From centres of learning to research institutions
Traditionally, universities were expected to fulfil several important functions. They provided advanced education, encouraged intellectual inquiry, protected freedom of expression and developed the critical thinking skills necessary for scientific and cultural progress.
Professor Fenton argues that all four functions have deteriorated.
One of his initial concerns relates to the changing incentives within academia. Historically, an outstanding university lecturer might develop a considerable reputation through the quality of their teaching.
Students attended lectures because they were intellectually stimulating, informative and engaging.
Today, Professor Fenton suggests, career advancement depends much more heavily on research publications, grant income and institutional research performance. This creates a potential conflict.
If an academic’s professional advancement depends primarily on publishing papers and obtaining research funding, time devoted to undergraduate teaching may be regarded as a distraction rather than a priority.
Of course, research is essential to the advancement of knowledge. Universities must contribute to the discovery of new information. However, there is a legitimate question about whether the balance between teaching and research has shifted too far.
The UK Research Excellence Framework, for example, assesses research quality and helps determine the distribution of public research funding. Teaching quality is assessed through completely different mechanisms.
These arrangements are intended to encourage excellence, but the incentives they create do not always align with students’ educational interests.
Professor Fenton also raises the issue of degree inflation. Over recent decades, the proportion of students obtaining first-class honours degrees has increased substantially. He argues that this cannot simply be explained by improvements in student ability.
The graphic below shows increased proportion of first-class degrees awarded by UK universities.
There are, of course, alternative explanations, including changes in assessment, teaching methods and student preparation. Nevertheless, the increase raises questions about whether degree classifications retain their historical meaning.
If qualifications become progressively easier to obtain, their usefulness as indicators of academic achievement may diminish.
Academic freedom and the right to disagree
Perhaps the strongest theme emerging from our conversation was Professor Fenton’s concern about academic freedom.
Universities should be environments in which established assumptions can be questioned. Indeed, much of scientific progress depends on precisely this process.
A hypothesis is proposed, evidence is collected, conclusions are challenged, and understanding develops.
Professor Fenton believes this culture of open inquiry has increasingly been replaced by an expectation of conformity, particularly on politically sensitive subjects. He identifies ‘climate change’, COVID-19 policies and social issues as areas in which academics expressing dissenting views may face professional or reputational consequences.
His criticism is not simply that particular opinions have become dominant. Academic consensus is often entirely appropriate when supported by strong evidence. Rather, his concern is that disagreement itself may sometimes be treated as unacceptable. This raises an important distinction.
There is a fundamental difference between demonstrating that an argument is wrong and attempting to prevent that argument from being expressed.
Scientific claims should be evaluated according to their evidence, methods and reasoning. Equally, academic freedom does not mean that every claim is scientifically credible or that criticism should be suspended.
Poorly supported arguments must remain open to robust challenge. The objective should be an environment where ideas can be tested without intimidation, while maintaining appropriate standards of evidence.
A personal experience of academic intolerance
Professor Fenton described an incident from 2022 that he regards as particularly revealing. At the time, he was teaching a compulsory master’s-level module concerned with risk, probability and statistical reasoning.
The course was not political. Its subject matter involved mathematical approaches to uncertainty and their application in fields such as medicine and law. Approximately 300 students were registered.
Following his first lecture, Professor Fenton says a delegation of around 10–12 students complained to the head of his school. Their objection was not to the mathematical content of the lecture. Instead, they objected to being taught by someone they regarded as a COVID ‘denier’, anti-vaccination campaigner or conspiracy theorist.
Professor Fenton had become a prominent critic of aspects of the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He explained that the lecture in question had been recorded and could be reviewed to establish whether anything inappropriate had been said.
However, he felt that the institutional response placed responsibility on him rather than encouraging the students to evaluate his teaching independently.
The underlying principle is worth considering. Should students be able to reject teaching because they disagree with a lecturer’s publicly expressed opinions on unrelated matters? A university education should surely involve encountering people whose views differ from one’s own.
Learning to distinguish between the quality of an argument and the personal beliefs of the person presenting it is an important intellectual skill.
COVID-19 and the role of academic authority
The pandemic provides an interesting example of the relationship between scientific expertise and public policy. Professor Fenton was highly critical of lockdowns, vaccination mandates and the use of behavioural science to influence public compliance.
He argues that academic modelling played an important role in creating the conditions under which governments introduced restrictions on civil liberties.
Epidemiological models certainly influenced pandemic policy. However, models are not predictions of inevitable outcomes. They are conditional estimates based on assumptions about transmission, population behaviour, interventions and other variables. Their usefulness depends on the validity of those assumptions and the way uncertainty is communicated.
Professor Fenton believes that insufficient attention was given to alternative interpretations of the evidence and the wider consequences of restrictions. These consequences included disruption to education, economic hardship, reduced access to some healthcare services and effects on mental wellbeing.
At the same time, restrictions were introduced in response to a genuine public health situation, but their effectiveness and proportionality required careful assessment against the available evidence and circumstances.
The important lesson is not that scientific modelling should be abandoned. Rather, scientific advice must remain open to scrutiny, and policy decisions should acknowledge uncertainty, competing risks and the limits of available knowledge.
Science informs public policy, but scientific expertise alone cannot determine the balance between health protection, personal liberty, education and economic wellbeing. Those decisions also involve ethical and political judgements.
Artificial intelligence: a new mechanism of control?
Another particularly interesting part of our discussion concerned artificial intelligence. Professor Fenton’s concern is that AI systems may increasingly determine which information people encounter and which claims are labelled misleading or false.
Automated systems already play an important role in moderating online content and identifying potentially manipulated material. Such systems can have legitimate purposes, including detecting fraud, spam, impersonation and fabricated images.
However, Professor Fenton raises the question of who decides what constitutes misinformation.
If an algorithm is trained to favour particular interpretations of contested subjects, there is a risk that it may reinforce prevailing assumptions rather than independently evaluate evidence.
He illustrated this with an amusing example. At a recent book launch, photographs were taken of him standing beside a life-sized cardboard cutout of the singer Céline Dion. When one of the photographs was posted online, he says an AI system incorrectly identified the genuine photograph as AI-generated.
The example is relatively harmless, but it illustrates a broader technical problem. An automated classifier can produce false positives as well as false negatives.
A genuine photograph may be classified as artificial, just as a manipulated photograph may escape detection. When similar systems are used to classify statements, opinions or scientific claims, errors may have more serious consequences.
Professor Fenton fears that AI could become a powerful means of enforcing conformity. While AI can clearly have many positive outcomes and provide many benefits his board of concern that significant AI research funding is directed towards ideological censorship should be open to full and transparent investigation.
The governance of automated content moderation is therefore a legitimate subject for public debate.
Transparency, opportunities to appeal incorrect decisions, and independent evaluation of algorithmic accuracy will become increasingly important.
Political ideology within universities
Our conversation also explored the influence of political ideology on higher education. Professor Fenton believes that universities have become increasingly dominated by particular progressive political perspectives.
He discussed diversity, equity and inclusion policies, critical race theory and what he describes as the wider influence of cultural Marxism.
Professor Fenton’s central concern is that institutional commitments to particular political frameworks may discourage intellectual diversity. He argues that academics whose views differ from those of their colleagues can experience difficulties with appointments, promotions and professional acceptance.
This is an important issue irrespective of political orientation. An institution dominated by conservative views could be just as intellectually restrictive as one dominated by progressive views.
The fundamental question is whether universities are prepared to appoint and protect competent academics whose conclusions challenge prevailing institutional assumptions.
Academic appointments should be based primarily on scholarly ability, teaching competence and research quality.
Political conformity should not become an informal qualification for employment.
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