Students

There’s a Tracey Ullman comedy sketch about the extreme and ugly form of political correctness afflicting the youth. It’s set in a self-help group for ‘people who are so woke [i.e. attuned to left-wing grievance politics] they are finding it impossible to have any fun at all.’ A newcomer to the class tells his story: ‘It started with the little things — signing an online petition; going to a march. Well, before I knew it, I was writing to the Guardian about LBGT representation in the Harry Potter books…’ At this point, a prissy young woman interjects: ‘Which is shocking by the way.’ The therapist (played by Ullman) calls her

Farewell then, Malia Bouattia. The only president of the National Union of Students to earn herself a condemnation from the Home Affairs Committee, Bouattia has been defeated in her bid to win re-election at the NUS conference in Brighton. Her time in charge of the NUS was ended by Shakira Martin, the Union’s vice-president for further education, who received 402 votes to Bouattia’s 272. Malia’s presidency was dogged by scandal. And as deluded as the NUS is, even it couldn’t continue to tolerate a leader who called Birmingham University a ‘Zionist outpost’ and once refused to back a motion condemning Isis, because she thought doing so would justify Islamophobia.  Martin was effectively the NUS top-tier’s

Remember the hoo-ha about the sharp fall in the number of EU students applying to study at British universities? Numbers were down, we were told, and there was only one reason: Brexit. In the months since the referendum, applications from EU students have fallen by seven per cent. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, told MPs they were ‘concerned about EU numbers’. These Brexit jitters were nothing new; in its initial application stage which ended in October, Cambridge University announced a 14.1 per cent dip year-on-year in students from the continent applying to study there. A spokesman for the university said there was ‘considerable uncertainty’ felt by EU students in the wake of the

Last week, students at York University staged a walkout from the sexual consent classes organised by their student union women’s officers. A quarter of the freshers decided they didn’t want to be lectured to by union worthies about when it’s OK to have sex. So they got up and left. ‘These talks are inherently patronising of both genders,’ said Ben Froughi, a third year accounting student at York, who had stirred up sex class dissent by handing out leaflets telling students the classes were optional and they didn’t have to attend. But sex consent classes are mandatory at some universities, including Cambridge and Oxford. Young people are being chaperoned through

In the post-Brexit landscape whose shape was barely glimpsed in G20 discussions at Hangzhou, one thing is clear: soon we’ll have to stop waffling about trade deals and start pushing British products the world wants to buy. One such is education, at our universities, independent schools and English-language colleges — an export sector calculated in 2011 by the now defunct Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to be worth £17.5 billion. Not only does this sector attract foreign exchange, plug funding gaps for cash-strapped universities and support thousands of jobs, it also lays the ground for future relationships with students who return home to embark on business careers. And as

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Naming the best columnist in Britain is like naming you’re the best Beatles song: it varies, depending on what kind of mood you’re in. But who would deny that Matthew Parris is in the top three? The quality of his writing is, itself, enough to put him into the premier league but that’s just part of the art. What sets Matthew apart is his sheer range, and his originality. You never know what he’ll be writing about, whether you’ll agree with him, or

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Naming the best columnist in Britain is like naming you’re the best Beatles song: it varies, depending on what kind of mood you’re in. But who would deny that Matthew Parris is in the top three? The quality of his writing is, itself, enough to put him into the premier league but that’s just part of the art. What sets Matthew apart is his sheer range, and his originality. You never know what he’ll be writing about, whether you’ll agree with him, or