Today’s undergraduates are customers – and the customer is always right

If you’re looking for a sign of the academic times, you could do worse than consider the image, published in newspapers recently, of Mr Chan King Wai at a solemn ceremony in China last year. There is Mr Chan, grinning stiffly but with real pride, dressed in a scholar’s cap with a gold tassel, and a red and shiny purple gown. Around his neck, a little incongruously, is a stripy Brideshead-type scarf. He looks like he has presented himself for Oxbridge theme week on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

He is showing a certificate to the camera. Holding the other end of the certificate, and mustering more of a grimace than a grin, is Alan Hudson — recently retired director of programmes in leadership and public policy at Oxford’s China Centre. Mr Hudson is wearing a sober black gown over his suit, but hasn’t changed out of his brown trainers. This indicates to me that he may not be taking the ceremony as seriously as Mr Chan.