What are values and how are they to be understood in higher education?

Where shall we find a baseline for values in higher education? A kind of gold standard or tradition that can support or inspire? That shows us where we have been? That might influence were we are going? A book by Östling (2018), published in Sweden, is entitled: Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History. He is of the view that generally, there is a lack of well-developed ideas characterising the nature of a university. He believes that: “When it comes to conducting basic research on cardinal academic issues, Germany remains a scholarly nation in a class by itself. Those who wish to ponder the idea of the university cannot disregard the German tradition of scrutiny and reflection” (Östling, 2018: xv). It is true that the essentialist ideal of the Humboldtian university is regarded by some critics like Paletschek (2002) as a quasi-mythological construct that has waxed and waned historically; but Humboldtian ideas have had a renaissance at times when healing and inspiration were needed: e.g., after WWII, in the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium. Perhaps it is needed in our own post-pandemic times? Wilhelm von Humboldt has been “invoked as a rhetorical concept for those who fought against utilitarianism and market adaptation” (Östling, 2018: 216); “a corrective of the contemporaneous market ideology and of neo-utilitarianism” (ibid.: 221) that was only “widely and seriously discussed after the turn of the millennium” (p. 228).

The following parameters relating to knowledge, freedom and human relations/ wellbeing can be extracted from the Humboldtian ethos.

Knowledge is at the heart of higher education. In Germany, it incorporates a concept of the unity of knowledge, and also of the unity of research and teaching, both of which are integral to the research university. Knowledge is not a fixed quantum to be delivered, but rather a process, a search and a mode of thinking that helps to form one’s identity (Pritchard, 1990: 31-36, 41-44). It is related to education which is conveyed by the term Bildung. This derives etymologically from the word Bild meaning a “picture” of the Self as a work of art that has been transformed by education. The Self displays wholeness and balance of bodily, moral and spiritual values to be achieved through study and lifestyle. This educational concept is so deeply held in German society that it is embodied in the Constitution, Article 2 (1): “All persons have the right to the free unfolding of their personality, insofar as they do not infringe the rights of others, nor offend against the constitutional order or the moral law.”

Freedom is important in this enterprise and pertains to research, teaching and learning. The academic staff must be free to search for and disseminate truth as they see it. Students too must have freedom to search and to form themselves; they should not be “spoonfed” (verschult) with dumbed-down material (Pritchard, 1990: 36-40). In the Humboldtian canon of literature, Fichte (1807/1956) advocates grants for the students to liberate them from the constraints of poverty. Young people, he believes, should have an opportunity to develop an independent existence and not merely move from dependence upon parents to dependence upon employers. He regards academic freedom as a necessity for the attainment of maturity, and essential too for the good of the nation.

In the pursuit of knowledge, human relations and wellbeing are important. The unity of staff and students is a core value because they form an organic whole animated by their pursuit of learning. The community of scholars is important, and individuals should learn to express their distinctiveness in a liberal, common forum containing people from many different environments (Schleiermacher, 1808/1956: 281-3, 301). The students need variety of situation to grow and accept challenge to their previously unquestioned assumptions (Cowan, 1963: 142). This helps to liberate them from the narrowing bonds of class and interest groups. The community is democratic because neither the professors nor the students have a monopoly of knowledge. The personal relationship between staff and students promotes this process of seeking knowledge which unites research and teaching. It also helps to confer a research identity on universities (Pritchard, 1990: 44-46).

Aspects of this traditional value system were the inspiration for Harvard and Johns Hopkins in the United States. The aim of the present qualitative article will be to consider modern challenges to it, especially the ways in which it is influenced by modern media. The discussion will be based mainly on British higher education.

The challenge to knowledge

Post-truth knowledge and fake news

Universities may have done themselves a disfavour in some of the knowledge paradigms that they adopt. Especially in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, there has been a move from modernity to postmodernism which favours the transitory. The concept of knowledge is de-constructed, and the idea that objective truth is possible becomes discredited (Williams, 2016: 157). The spirit of the postmodern age is one of scepticism resulting in a relativity of values. According to Delanty (2000), it involves secularism, a lack of unity and cultural fragmentation. Knowledge forfeits its emancipatory, sometimes even redemptive, power which rested on its status as a metanarrative. Knowledge is often abandoned as an endpoint of research, leading to a mere “plurality of language games” (ibid.:143). Delanty (ibid.: 127) argues that “[S]cience has lost its ability to legitimate itself by reference to an independent criterion (…), such as a grand narrative”. Individuals now construct their own narratives, but nothing provides a principle of cultural unity. In such a cultural climate, it is difficult to find independent validating criteria. Post-modernist intellectual trends constitute, to some critics, a sort of epistemological relativism or nihilism that undermines trust in knowledge and by extension in universities as institutions. Östling (2018:242) claims that post-modernism has drained history of meaning.

The decline of confidence in knowledge is exacerbated by “fake news”. The British Government finds “information disorder” a more acceptable term than “fake news” which it regards as “poorly-defined” because it “conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference” (Murphy, 2018); but in some circumstances, it continues to deploy the older terminology and accepts its use in Parliament. The UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) was set up in 2019 within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) because of government concern about Russian meddling with the 2016 US presidential election and the UK referendum to leave the EU (Brexit).Footnote 1 Disinformation has been particularly prevalent in the time of COVID-19, during which the National Cyber Security Centre revealed a range of attacks being perpetrated online by cyber criminals seeking to exploit coronavirus. The CDU works with social media to deal with disinformation, such as claims pushing harmful ‘cures’ for COVID-19, e.g., drinking diluted bleach, gargling or holding your breath for 10 seconds.Footnote 2

In 2019, the Government’s report on Disinformation was published.Footnote 3 Damian Collins, Chair of the DCMS, greeted the emergence of the Report with a statement: “Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day. Much of this is directed from agencies working in foreign countries, including Russia. (…) Companies like Facebook exercise massive market power which enables them to make money by bullying the smaller technology companies and developers who rely on this platform to reach their customers. (…) We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people. The age of inadequate self-regulation must come to an end. (…) We also have to accept that our electoral regulations are hopelessly out of date for the internet age. More needs to be done to require major donors to clearly establish the source of their funds. (…) Much of the evidence we have scrutinised during our inquiry has focused on the business practices of Facebook. We believe that in its evidence to the Committee, Facebook has often deliberately sought to frustrate our work, by giving incomplete, disingenuous and at times misleading answers to our questions.”

Damian Collins’ efforts were not in vain. In the UK, the Online Safety Act (OSA) became law on 26 October 2023.Footnote 4 It joins the EU’s Digital Services Act (EU DSA) as an attempt to regulate technology in Europe. The OSA takes a zero-tolerance approach to protecting children from online harm, while conferring more choices on adults to determine what kids see online. It places legal responsibility on internet platform companies to prevent and rapidly remove illegal content like terrorism and revenge pornography. If providers fail to comply with the rules, they will face significant fines that could reach billions of pounds, and if they do not take steps required by the regulator, Ofcom, to protect children, their bosses could face prison (gov.uk, 2023; Persoff et al., 2023).

The debate round this issue demonstrates the tension between freedom for online platform providers and safety for users, particularly young people who are the most likely to use social media. In a major study, Vosoughi et al. (2018) show that tweets containing falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted than truthful tweets. Interestingly, they regard “fake news” as irredeemably polarised in the current political and media climate; they opt for the term “false” instead of “fake”. They investigate the diffusion of all the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ∼126,000 stories tweeted by ∼3 million people more than 4.5 million times. These data were verified as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organisations that exhibited 95% to 98% agreement on the classifications. The researchers begin their article with a statement about apparent parity of values in the media: “[S]ome conceptualization of truth or accuracy [is] central to the functioning of nearly every human endeavor. Yet, both true and false information spread rapidly through online media. Defining what is true and false has become a common political strategy, replacing debates based on a mutually agreed set of facts” (ibid.: 1146). They find that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information; politics is the largest item in their data set which also includes science, terrorism, natural disasters, urban legends and financial information. Many more people retweet falsehood than they do the truth. Falsehood is disseminated through peer-to-peer viral branching processes more intensively than through broadcast dynamics. It takes the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1500 people. The top 1% of false news spreads to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffuses to more than 1000 people.

The authors (Vosoughi et al., 2018) look at the dynamics of going viral and conclude that it is human behaviour more than bots which contributes to the differential spread of falsity and truth. When they investigate further, they find that novelty is an important force in spreading false rumours. False news is more novel than true news, and people are more likely to share novel information. Falsity and truth inspire different emotions. Whereas false stories inspire fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspire anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it. This means that the human actor is more salient than the non-human actor which is a digital artefact. The power of false news is thus in large measure to be attributed to behavioural syndromes, mediated by technology. It will be the purpose of the next section to analyse some of these syndromes.

Bubbles, cognitive misers and biases

On 16 January 2023, the British Member of Parliament, John Penrose, led a debate in Westminster Hall on Filter Bubbles in public life. The concept emanates from Pariser (2011a, b) who pointed out that social media can be manipulated in an unbalanced, one-sided way that cuts users off from important evidence. Information providers sometimes manipulate users in an attempt to “please” them by presenting material that is personalised and based on algorithmic editing of their web history. This stratagem can be financially lucrative. Advertisements can be inserted of a type that is likely to appeal to the interests and life circumstances of the user. However, Filter Bubbles may have less benign consequences than achieving user congruence and user-relevant advertisements. Depriving social media users of information that is critical of a regime helps dictators to maintain whatever fictions suit their purposes and can effectively put blinkers on the population. This is the reason why it was an issue for the political authorities of East Germany that their people were able to watch West German television before the fall of the Wall (Garton Ash, 1993:135-136). In a worst case scenario, Filter Bubbles can result in a threat to democracy. Pariser (2011a) in a TED talk addresses internet providers as follows:

[I]nstead of a balanced information diet, you can end up with information junk food…We really need you to make sure that these algorithms have encoded in them a sense of the public life, a sense of civic responsibility…We need [the internet] to connect us all together, we need it to introduce us to new ideas and new people, and it’s not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated in a Web of one.

Filter Bubbles are linked to a number of syndromes that are highly relevant to the use of social media and to knowledge. During the debate on Brexit, many young people obtained their information directly from social media and voted the way they thought their friends were voting. One year before the referendum, only 18% of 15- to 24-year-olds could correctly answer three basic questions about the European Union.Footnote 5 Of the 28 members states (now down to 27 with the UK withdrawal) the United Kingdom’s knowledge score was the lowest of all (Hix, 2015). After the Brexit vote in June 2016, questions posed on social media by young people themselves revealed continuing ignorance about basic facts. This demographic was unsure what the EU was and what the Common Market was. Confronted with an important political issue, they had voluntarily deprived themselves of information that was freely available, if they had been receptive to information about it. They had become “Cognitive Misers”. The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines a cognitive miser as “anyone who seeks out quick, adequate solutions to problems rather than slow, careful ones. Despite this negative denotation, the term describes a general tendency among all people. That is, as a rule people tend to use mental shortcuts [heuristics] in making judgments and drawing inferences.”Footnote 6 The human mind often seeks to avoid exerting cognitive effort. This can result in platitudes, wishful thinking, phatic communion, stereotypes, over-generalisations, quotations rather than thoughts, shortcuts, memes and tropes that are compatible with individuals’ existing schemata.

The era of COVID-19 was particularly conducive to conspiracy and misapprehension. Nationally it was a difficult time in the UK where there were many deaths. The then prime minister, Boris Johnston, was himself hospitalised with COVID and for some days, his life hung in the balance; his young partner, Carrie Symonds, was expecting their first child and despaired of his recovery. He was in intensive care (Merrick & Gye, 2020). When eventually he was discharged from hospital, he was filmed on the steps of St Thomas’ Hospital with the medical staff who had fought for his life. Boris and Carrie were so grateful for the medics’ efforts that they included “Nicholas” as one of their infant son’s three Christian names; this was explicitly intended to be a token of thanks to Dr Nick Price and Professor Nick Hart who had both cared for Boris during his illness. At this stage, a personal friend of the author communicated to her the view that Boris had never had COVID. Though the friend was convinced of this as a truth, it turned out to be a meme of the British Labour Party (Boris Johnston is Conservative) which prevailed briefly before being refuted. Labour’s most senior elected official, Andi Fox, had spread the rumour (Devlin, 2020). The friend picked up the disinformation because she drew her news predominantly from Twitter (X). One chooses whom or what cause to “follow”, and she followed Labour which made her, on this occasion, a victim of Confirmation Bias —notwithstanding the fact that she was a degree-holder. Higher education did not protect her against being deceived.

Confirmation Bias pertains to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. The term is believed to have been coined by Wason (1960) and indicates the tendency of people to take on board information that is compatible with their existing beliefs. It is guided by defensive rather than accuracy motives and is difficult to change once established (Hart et al., 2009). It may lead individuals to ignore challenging information and only remember whatever supports their current opinions. They tend to overlook or reject disconfirming information. This has the comforting effect of avoiding cognitive dissonance when confronted with uncongenial material, but it may lead to wrong conclusions and decisions. Confirmation Bias overlaps with Motivated Reasoning (Kunda, 1990) in which one’s emotions control one’s approach to information. Being one-sided, it is incompatible with clear-headed analysis based on a range of evidence. A related concept is Cognitive (not Confirmation) Bias which involves intellectual selection of whatever confirms one’s views (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).

Such types of bias are perpetuated by users of social media who seek out certain angles or websites that only present sympathetic information. Bias and bubbles make it more difficult to pursue those values of critical thought and logical reasoning that are supposed to characterise academic study — and they may be conducive to cheating. The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) (2020) found that 60% of US university students admitted to cheating in some form. The publisher Pearson claimed that Chegg Inc. (a US Tech. Company) was violating copyright by selling answers to questions contained in the publisher’s textbooks: in effect, Chegg was helping students cheat (Braithwaite, 2021). “Academic misconduct is not a micro-problem, it’s not even a macro-problem – this is a mega-problem,” said Sarah Eaton (University of Calgary and the ICAI). “This is rippling across the globe right now” (reported by Basken, 2020). In the UK, Alpha Academic Appeals (AAA) (July 2022) sampled 900 undergraduate students about academic integrity. About 16% of students had cheated in online exams during 2022. Of those students who admitted to cheating, only a very small minority (5%) were caught by their institutions. About one third of students believed that cheating was either not wrong or only mildly wrong. The lead barrister at AAA, Dr Daniel Sokol, pointed out that this problem is “of great importance to employers who rely on degree grades to aid recruitment. For some subjects, like medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, cheating in exams can result in unqualified students graduating and exposing other people to risk of serious harm.” Since April 2022, essay mills enabling contract cheating have become illegal in the UK under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. However, the cheating trend is encouraged by high-stakes testing; inflation of results; COVID-19; and vigorously “helped” by technology: 79% of students in the AAA survey reckoned that it was easier to cheat online than in examination halls.

In an age of unprecedented access to knowledge, technology provides the means to disseminate it or to subvert it on a scale never seen before in human history.

The challenge to freedom

Political correctness and freedom

The difficulty of pursuing reason, logic and factual accuracy is intensified by political correctness which constrains freedom of speech. Here we shall present one case study of a particular academic; but there are many comparable cases: for example, that of Professor Jo Phoenix of whom more later.Footnote 7

A Case Study: Kathleen Stock was professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She was so successful that in New Year 2021 she was honoured by the Government with an OBE award (Order of the British Empire) for services to Higher Education; however, 600 academics signed a letter criticising the Government’s decision, claiming that she was attacking trans people. She was forced to resign from her post because of student protests at the University of Sussex where a furor arose from publication of her book Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021). This book is written in a clear accessible style, ranging over disciplines such as law, history of ideas, medicine, psychology, biology and genetics, as well as philosophy.

The controversy could be described as follows. Stock (2021) criticises the one-sided nature of “standpoint epistemology”: this is the view that the opinions of non-trans people who are critical of trans argumentation should be ignored as irrelevant, and that because trans people may be members of an oppressed minority, everyone should defer to the trans standpoint (ibid.: 213).Footnote 8 Stock (ibid.: 143) rejects the arguments of feminist writer, Butler (1990), that biological sex does not exist and that womanhood & manhood are exclusionary categories; she strongly disagrees with the proposition that there are “no material biological sexes” (Stock, 2021: 275). She believes that one needs to distinguish between biological reality and invisible, self-chosen, gender identity; she further contends that biological sex is more important than gender self-identification especially when it comes to law and policy. Though normally scrupulous about respecting people’s gender pronouns, Stock denies the desired pronoun “she” or “her” to Karen White, a man who transitioned to become a trans woman, and who was placed in a female prison. White committed sexual assault on female prisoners when in that jail (ibid.: 209-210). Stock argues that people cannot literally change sex; and that the 2004 UK Gender Recognition Act created a legal fiction about the possibility of sex change. The law sometimes acts as if something is real when it is not: e.g., a company can be treated as a “person” (ibid.: 178 & p. 181).

Students at the University of Sussex castigated Kathleen Stock as a transphobic person and a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF). She was exposed to an intense, hostile campaign involving threatening communications, demos of masked men on campus, posters, graffiti and flares (p. viii). She was told by police to stay away from campus; to take precautions for her safety, including installing CCTV at her home and using bodyguards. The situation became so inflamed that she was forced to resign from her post. Yet the irony of the trans attacks on her is that she is a lesbian and a sex-nonconforming woman (Stock, 2021: 40) who lives with another woman, Laura, her “darling wife” (ibid.: 277). She strongly supports protective laws for trans people. “I gladly and vocally assert the rights of trans people to live their lives free from fear, violence, harassment or any discrimination”.Footnote 9 Another irony is that despite losing her job at Sussex, Kathleen Stock’s publications were entered into the University’s submission to the British Research Excellence Framework (REF) as evidence of Impact. Philosophy performed well in Impact so, despite her suffering and dismissal, Stock’s publications will bring thousands of pounds to the institution that failed to give her adequate support when she needed it (Grove, 2022).

Freedom of speech

The case of Kathleen Stock raises issues about freedom of speech. She believes that in her plight “[[L]egislation about such freedom] would have made a real difference because there is …lack of understanding of the value of free speech and academic freedom on British university campuses” (Grove, 2021). The then Vice Chancellor Adam Tickell of Sussex did admit: “I’m really concerned that we have masked protesters putting up posters calling for the sacking of somebody for exercising her right to articulate her views.” Stock herself states that “Universities aren’t places where students should just expect to hear their own thoughts reflected back at them. Arguments should be met by arguments and evidence by evidence, not intimidation or aggression” (Lawrie, 2012). Actually, the University of Sussex could and should have done better by Kathleen Stock. In a case entitled Maya Forstater versus CGD Europe, an Employment Appeal Tribunal decided that “gender critical beliefs” fall within the definition of philosophical belief worthy of protection under the Equality Act 2010. It is possible to believe that human beings cannot change sex whilst also protecting the human rights of people who identify as transgender. This means that employees who hold gender critical beliefs cannot legally be discriminated against for holding such beliefs (Warner Goodman, 2021). In a case analogous to that of Kathleen Stock, Professor Jo Phoenix, a lesbian who set up the Gender Critical Research Network (GCRN) at the Open University (OU), came into dispute with her employer over her views on gender. She was obliged to resign from her job in December 2021, but a tribunal ruled that this was constructive dismissal; on 22 January 2024, Jo Phoenix was found to have suffered victimisation and harassment, as well as direct discrimination (Siddique, 2024). She had won her case against the OU.

The UK does not have a written Constitution, so the freedoms that are explicitly mentioned in the Constitutions of some other countries (e.g., Germany)Footnote 10 mostly remain implicit in British socio-political life. This implies the pre-existence of a society with a relatively strong degree of cohesion and consensus. However, these freedoms can no longer be taken for granted because of the woke movement.Footnote 11 A survey entitled “You Can’t Say That” (Hillman, 2022) which deals with student views on freedom of speech polled 1,019 undergraduates. It was previously administered in 2016, so comparisons can be made between past and present opinion. Clearly in 2022 UK students have moved away much more decisively than in 2016 from supporting campus freedom of expression. Eighty-six per cent (86%) of students support the No-Platform Policy of the National Union of Students, (up from 76% in 2016) while just 5% say “the NUS should not limit free speech or discussion” (down from 11% in 2016). Most students wish to see greater restrictions imposed on their peers than in the past: for example, nine out of ten students now support trigger warnings. A new question was asked on freedom of speech and the answers reveal that fewer than half the students (48%) support the idea of a new “free speech champion” in England. Hillman (ibid.: 14-15) concludes: “A high proportion of students have a very different conception of academic freedom and free speech norms than earlier generations and from many of those who legislate, regulate or govern UK higher education institutions. (…) The level of student support for greater restrictions on free expression is so high that it is unlikely to be something that higher education institutions can grapple with on their own, assuming it is thought to need tackling, but instead is an issue for wider society.”

Notwithstanding potential student pushback, and in defiance of the traditional unwillingness to codify freedom, the British Government has now passed the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act which came into operation on May 11 2023.Footnote 12 It brings in new measures that will require universities and, for the first time, student unions, to promote and protect freedom of speech for students, academics and visiting speakers. As a result, academic institutions may face sanctions, including fines, if they are found to have unlawfully stifled educational freedom of speech. During the preparatory stages when the Freedom of Speech Act was still a “Bill”, yet to be passed by Parliament, the then universities minister, Michelle Donelan, stated that it was designed to “tackle the growing chilling effect on campuses which is silencing and censoring students, academics and visiting speakers” (Jamdar, 2021).

The Act defines freedom within the law as the right to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without individuals placing themselves at risk of being adversely affected by loss of their jobs or privileges, making it less likely that they might secure promotion at their “higher education provider” (HEP) (Act, AI, paras 6 & 7). The governing body of a registered higher education provider must a) define its understanding of, and promote the importance of, freedom of speech within the law, and (b) lay down the procedures to be followed by staff and students of the HEP in the organisation of meetings which are to be held on its premises (Act, A2 (1) (2) (a) & (b)). A speech either in a students’ union or in the HEP’S premises must not take place on terms that require the individual or body to bear some or all of the costs of security relating to their use of the premises (one recalls here the police urging Kathleen Stock to employ a bodyguard). There are to be sanctions against the HEP if it fails in its duties. The Office for Students (OfS, the independent HE regulator in England) has been given the power to enforce freedom of speech under a new complaints scheme. Professor Arif Ahmed, formerly a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, was appointed in June 2023 to oversee the OfS’s performance of its free speech functions. So, legal support for freedom of speech at national and institutional level is now judged to be vitally necessary in present-day British academia. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) in their book How Democracies Die argue that democracy is in retreat all over the world. To combat this, they believe that students need to be committed to the survival of the democratic political order and to freedom of speech. This can no longer be achieved by discussion and consensus in the UK; it needs to be backed by the force of law. Kathleen Stock considers that it is “a shame that we have to use such a big stick to get universities to recognise the value of academic freedom which should be seen as an end in itself” (Grove, 2021).

The challenge to wellbeing in higher education

Stress on staff and students

We must never forget that a sound economic basis is essential to the good conduct of higher education -- vulnerable as it is to contraction of resources. In fact, Menand (1996:19) fears that academic freedom will be “killed by lack of money”. However, neoliberalism is conducive to a utilitarian concept of higher education, and on occasion to managerial ruthlessness. At its worst, such instrumentalism can result in a toxic culture for both the individual and the institution –ultimately even for society as a whole. In 2019, the most successful article in the Times Higher was entitled “Want to get ahead in academia?” (Dumitrescu, 2019). Of course, this catchy title lured many people into the text, hoping no doubt to pick up a few tips in the battle to achieve promotion; but quickly the irony of the piece became obvious to them. Here was the advice provided.

  • Try adopting a toxic personality.

  • Do nothing for anyone unimportant. Cultivate powerful friends.

  • Crush the confidence of students with the potential to surpass you.

  • Claim your students’ work as your own and reassign their best ideas to your favourites.

  • Anyone else’s gain is your loss. Life in academia is a zero-sum game. Collaboration is for losers.

  • “Gaslight” other people and spread misinformation about anyone who stands up to you.Footnote 13

  • Gain power over as many publication organs and scholarly bodies as possible and use them to promote your clique.

  • “You too can become upwardly toxic; if you are the sort of person who likes harassing less powerful people, you will enjoy it too. (…) Threaten lawsuits, repercussions, closed-off opportunities. The more people cave to fear, the more they become implicated in shared guilt and work to maintain silence whether they want to or not.” (Dumitrescu, 21.11.2019: 29).

The word “toxic” (poisonous) is used by other authors too, for example Smyth (2018) in his book entitled The Toxic University. He claims that too much emphasis is placed on the economic value of higher education thereby leading to materialism and instrumentalism. Unwillingness of governments and inability of universities to pay for sufficient staff in HEIs lead to the casualisation of academic teaching, and the resulting employment insecurity causes fear and stress. In fact, stress is rampant in British academia where levels of psychological wellbeing fall badly short of national Health and Safety Executive standards. Between 2009 and 2015 there was an overall increase of 165% in referrals of academic staff to occupational health services (Morrish, 2019: 23). There have been 2 suicides (Malcolm Anderson and Stefan Grimm). A Workload Survey carried out by the University and College Union (UCU, 2022) indicates that most academics work an average of more than two unpaid days every week. Overall, 87% of HE staff reported that workload had increased over the past three years, with more than two thirds (68%) saying that it had increased significantly (up from 59% in 2016). Almost one third of those in HE (N=9850) regarded their workload as unmanageable most of the time (UCU, 2022:30).

Students as well as staff suffer from stress which can affect their mental health. The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Advance Higher Education (AHE) have completed an annual longitudinal survey for 2023 which facilitates year-on-year comparisons by posing key questions (Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES) authored by Neves and Stevenson, 2023). It has been running since 2005/06, so trends can be identified over almost two decades; it also sometimes includes new questions to address current concerns. The 2023 sample consists of 10,163 responses. There is some recovery from the time of COVID, but “political and policy uncertainty, high inflation and the shock of the pandemic all ensure we are not living in normal times” (ibid.). Students’ levels of wellbeing are low especially when compared with the general population surveyed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).Footnote 14 The SAES and the ONS Surveys both asked the same questions about wellbeing. The ONS response figures will be given below in brackets after those of the SAES 2023 Survey. Students were questioned about the following dimensions of wellbeing: whether their lives were worthwhile: SAES, 17% responded positively (77% ONS); happiness 17% (74% ONS); life satisfaction 13% (74% ONS); anxiety 16% (32% ONS). The disparities between the student and the general population are strikingly different.

Student perceptions of whether their higher education is value for money have fluctuated greatly over a decade. In 2013, 50% of students found their courses good/ very good value for money (VFM); but in 2021, the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, this sank to 27%. It has now risen to 37%, so there is progress in the right direction, but the percentage is still low. Roughly a third of British students (31%) find their courses poor VFM. The student concerns that led to these ratings of poor VFM were as follows (aggregated for all four countries of the United Kingdom): cost of living 41%; tuition 40%; teaching quality 31%. The authors of the SAES 2023 study (Neves and Stevenson, 2023: 16) express their surprise at cost of living now outstripping tuition fees which is a perennial concern. There has been a statistically significant increase (11% up to 16%) in the proportion who feel their experience has matched their expectations – nearly double the level of 2013. This 16% is the highest it has ever been but as with VFM, the figure is still very low for such an important parameter. About 3/10 have considered leaving their course, and this is mainly because of their poor emotional health. They wanted more in-person contact with their lecturers. They also wanted enhanced mental health support within institutions, as well as increased understanding from academic staff. An average of 7.5 hours per week are now spent working to earn money to stay alive. One student stated in an open-ended response: “The cost of living is crippling and having to work to pay bills while studying is a nightmare” (ibid.). Fifty-five per cent (55%) of the students were in paid employment which is a lot higher than before the pandemic, and indeed is at the highest level since the survey began (ibid.: 35). Callender and de Gayardon (2021) have conducted a study of English Graduates’ Attitudes towards Loan Repayment. They found that in 2020, UK HE graduates left higher education with average loan debts of £45,060 (ca. $52,000). Most believe that they will never be able to repay this money. (…) The very thought causes a psychological burden of anxiety, pressure, worry and dread about the ever-present and growing debt hanging over them until the day they die (ibid.: 21 & 44). Cater (2023) argues for “forgivable” fees on the grounds that repayments scheduled to continue for 40 years lead to unfilled posts in schools, hospitals and the community; they may also correlate with a decline in the British birthrate (813,000 in 2012; 682,000 in 2020).

One recalls that Fichte (1807/1956) advocated grants for the students to liberate them from the constraints of poverty. British higher education is ranked among the best in the world, but the cost of such quality can be high for those who learn, teach, and manage in its institutions. To survive and thrive in the modern academic environment, it has been necessary to modify some features of the Humboldtian tradition; after all, higher education is now a mass rather than an elite system. However, the power of online social media combined with the one-sidedness arising from bias constitutes a real danger to knowledge and critical thinking. Even well-educated persons are routinely duped by the media’s disdain for fact and truth values. Political correctness can militate against freedom and natural justice, especially in gender-related matters. The heavy weight of financial debt can cast a dark cloud over student days which traditionally are “supposed” to be happy. Many governments now consider happiness and wellness statistics in conjunction with Gross Domestic Product. The 2012 World Happiness Report (WHR) (Helliwell et al., 2012) includes a special case study of Bhutan with its famous Gross National Happiness Index. The 10th Bhutanese Plan explicitly seeks “to address a more meaningful purpose for development than just the mere fulfillment (sic) of material satisfaction” (WHR/Helliwell et al., 2012: 117). It is believed that “a holistic education extends beyond a conventional formal education framework to reflect and respond more directly to the task of creating good human beings. It is important for Bhutan that an education indicator includes the cultivation and transmission of values” (ibid.). The 2012 WHR/Helliwell et al. publication (ibid.: 6) poses the question: “[S]hould we consider some parts of our society to be ‘off bounds’ to the profit motive, so that we can foster the spirit of cooperation, trust, and community?”

Perhaps we should apply this to universities. Perhaps too there are some lessons that we can learn from values in Bhutan.