You've been Trumped (by Grampian Police)

If you want to get upset about something I suggest you might turn your attention to this. The back story is of a British and a Canadian journalist being arrested and charged with breach of the peace by Grampian Police for, in essence, asking awkward questions. They apparently interviewed members of   Donald Trump's organization about the treatment of locals who do not want to sell land they legally own. Apparently the patrons of Trump's luxury golfing resort  mustn't be offended while they sip their martinis by the sight of the great unwashed squatting just outside the barbed wire. Clearly the organization later thought better of it and in the hope of covering over the traces had a word with Inspector Knacker who sent the boys round. You think this only happens in China, Russia, Belarus? No, it happens here in as little time as it takes to put a Masonic apron on.  In theme park Britain we mustn't upset rich investors must we? Anyone read Julian Barnes' England, England?

New College

The Guardian is today still printing comments repeating the false plagiarism allegations about the courses that will be offered by A. C. Grayling's New College of the Humanities. This despite yesterday publishing a letter from the Dean of the University of London's International Programme which confirms in its essentials the points I made in my last blog entry. The capacity of apparently intelligent people to shout their mouths off without the slightest attempt to understand the facts of the matter is something that never ceases to amaze me. Yes, we all have knee-jerk reactions to some things and I can see that in the present political context the funding of higher education is a controversial subject, but the English chattering class habit of proffering strong opinions without bothering with the inconvenience of facts can get a bit tedious. No wonder that in international comparison most of our so called "public intellectuals" are a bit, well, second rate. It would perhaps be unduly provocative to suggest that the establishment's uncritical worship of "PPE flash" might have something to do with it.

Staying on an Oxford theme, I'm a bit surprised that the Warden of  New College (the Oxford one that is) has entered the fray and condemned Grayling's choice of name for his outfit. All a bit unseemly. And come on, nobody that matters is going to confuse New College, Oxford with the New College of the Humanities. The argument that there will be reputational spillover seems pretty far fetched. Has Regent's Park College (Oxford) suffered in any material way from having to put up with the existence of Regents College (which actually is in Regent's Park) or Regent's Park Community College in Southampton? Undoubtedly the punters at all three of these institutions differ enormously (not least in the size of their own or their daddy's bank balance) but is there any serious evidence that the name similarity has confused anybody?

New College of the Humanities: what's the fuss about?

The press is full of nasty stuff about Anthony Grayling and his associates, see here and here for some examples. Their crime is that they have set up the so called New College of the Humanities  (NCH) which will tutor students for what used to be called the University of London External Degree and is now called the University of London International Programmes (ULIP). The external degree is, in a sense, the original University of London degree. At its origin the university was little more than an examining institution with people preparing for its degrees by themselves or at crammers. Today there are a vast number of institutions throughout the world, many of them quality controlled by the University of London, that offer teaching to prepare students for the ULIP. So why the fuss about one more? 

First there is a red herring about plagiarism. A number of academics have made asses of themselves by making public accusations of plagiarism. What actually happened is that they wrote so called "subject guides" for ULIP courses - I wrote one myself almost 20 years ago, now thankfully long superceded! These subject guides define the syllabus that will be examined by ULIP. NCH has published these syllabuses so that its students will know what they will study. All reputable institutions that tutor for the ULIP  do the same thing. How else should students know what the course content is? The accusations of plagiarism are nonsense on stilts. It would make as much sense to accuse Open University tutors of plagiarism because they follow a course of instruction defined by OU Course Units or Oxford University PPE tutors of plagiarism because they teach to a syllabus and reading list written  by somebody else.

Secondly, there is the issue of fees. NCH will charge £18,000 a year, twice what it will cost to take roughly equivalent courses at regular University of London colleges. But what is the problem with that? Presumably anyone who can get into UCL, LSE, Kings or SOAS and pay £9,000 will do so - assuming that they are indifferent to the  charm of an occasional tutorial with Richard Dawkins. Ah, you say, so the less able but better heeled can buy a degree. Yes, exactly, provided they meet the not too exacting minimum entrance requirements of the University of London - which are by the way little different from the minimum entry requirements of most UK universities. But they can do that already whether or not NCH exists. Anyone, on the payment of a fee, who satisfies the minimum entrance requirements can register for the ULIP - in that sense it is much more democratically open than most conventional UK universities. There is then nothing to stop them paying as much as they like for private tuition to prepare themselves for the end of  year examinations. If they have the means they could enter into private bi-lateral contracts with Dawkins, Dworkin, Cannadine, Uncle Tom Cobley and all to provide them with weekly instruction which at University and College Union recommended consultancy rates would no doubt costs quite a bit more than £18,000 per annum.

Whether 2 tutorials a week, most of which will presumably not be provided by the headline professoriate, is actually worth £18,000 a year is an open question which the market will eventually pronounce on. If it turns out though that NCH have settled at somewhere near the right price it clearly implies that the Oxford students  who were so quick to get on their moral high horses are, even under the new fee regime, getting a bargain, though probably not one that is sustainable for very long. It also, of course,  confirms my skepticism about the pedagogical efficiency of tutorials. Two "tutes" a week and you still can't reason your way out of a paper bag let alone establish the basic facts of the matter? It's scarcely an advertisement for the system.

Liber Niger Procuratorum

I've been involved in the last couple of years, to a greater or lesser extent, in three investigations of student misconduct. All had one thing in common: use of the internet either as the medium of the crime or to produce the evidence that nailed the worthless wretch.

Case 1. Towards the end of the Summer I received an email from  a student saying that they would be unable to submit their dissertation because they  were having emergency surgery for what by common consent would be described as a very distressing condition. Usually in these cases there is little to worry about academically.  You provide medical evidence - normally certification of some sort from your surgeon  - and the Proctors decide what should happen. Nobody is ever disadvantaged if they have a genuine (certified) medical problem. In this case the medical evidence was slow to appear. Weeks and then months went by, emails were exchanged, letters were said to have been sent but never arrived. It all began to look odd.  Eventually a letter did arrive, purporting to come from the student's surgeon. As soon as I saw it I smelt a rat. Together with one of our departmental assistants I started to take a closer look at the document. A trivial internet search showed that the logo on the letterhead was real but the address of the clinic though real didn't seem to be the address of a medical facility. Google maps and streetview allowed us to establish that the address was in fact an apartment block. It was also easy to establish that the phone number of the "clinic" was registered to a cell phone - somewhat unlikely for a medical facility. And there was more. We were able to check online if the "surgeon" was licensed by the appropriate medical authority - no person of that name was registered. Finally, and hilariously, the student's Facebook wall recorded them arranging to play tennis a day after they came out from under the knife - which, given the nature of the surgery - seemed, to say the least, physically unlikely. The Proctorial investigation found the accused guilty of misconduct and slung them out of the university.

Case 2. One day I was copied into an email from an aggrieved journal referee complaining that a student had more than once submitted articles for publication that were little more than crude cut and paste jobs from other people's work. On close examination there was little doubt about it. The student had an apparently impressive CV full of published pieces in relatively obscure internet journals that were blatantly plagiarized. The way that it was done was so artless that it was difficult to imagine how they had thought they would get away with it. To cap it all off it turned out that papers turned in as part of their doctoral research had been plagiarized in the same fashion. At no point did the student admit their guilt, even when presented with the evidence. Instead they concocted a fantastical story of coincidences that  collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Eventually they withdrew from their studies on "medical grounds" and thus preempted the inevitable expulsion.

Case 3. I received an email from an academic in another university who has a research interest in academic fraud. As part of a research project they monitor "essay mill" websites and he had noticed that somebody was touting a contract to write a paper on a subject and using materials that derived from a course I used to teach which this year was being taught by a colleague. Signing up for the site I got access to the bidding process and learned something about the monetary worth of my exercises. The range seemed to be from £60  for an effort promised by somebody who clearly couldn't write English through to about £160 for one written by somebody who had a few recommendations from satisfied customers. I gather the Proctorial investigation into this is ongoing, but the outcome so far has been a lot of inconvenience for the vast majority of honest students who had to rip up the work they had already done and sit a new assessment. I hope if the culprit is ever discovered they are named and shamed and their infamy follows them ever after.

The Libyan School of Economics

Spokespersons for the  LSE just can't help making  the institution seem more and more absurd. The Independent is running  a story today quoting Erik Ringmar who was  a few years ago more or less forced out of the School for whistle blowing. I knew him slightly and I can't say we shared a vision of social science, but his only crime was to tell the truth in an organisation that explicitly guaranteed his  right to do so, and then decided that allowing its staff free speech was bad for business. Personally I think he was unwise to do what he did, but he was honest and nobody ever disputed the facts that he drew attention to - which I know, in their essentials, to be true. If universities want second hand car salesmen they should employ them rather than expect academics to prostitute themselves. His experience of the admissions process was not mine, but I have no reason to disbelieve him and the LSE's attempt to discredit him by suggesting that his motivation is disgruntlement is, in my view,  simply shameful.

Howard Davies

If I had had more intelligence I should have titled my last post Howard Davies: my part in his downfall. It's a conjecture, but intelligence is something there may have been a surfeit of in this affair. You should continue to monitor events as they unfold.

Saif al-Gaddafi: My part in his downfall

In my last couple of years at the London School of Economics I coordinated admissions into the PhD programme of what at the time was called the Interdisciplinary Institute of Management (IIM). One day I received a phone call telling me that I was about to receive an admissions file containing information that should be treated in confidence. I don't now recall from whom or from where the call came, probably from someone in the admissions bureaucracy. As it  happened I could already guess what  was in the file. A rumour had been circulating for several weeks in Houghton Street that one of Gaddafi's sons had applied to do a doctorate. 

When I opened the file the decision was a no-brainer. Gaddafi Jnr had no relevant qualifications for our programme, no viable research project and there was nobody in the Institute with an interest in supervising him. I ticked the reject box and returned the file to the admissions office. I remember seeing a note to the effect that the next destination of the file was to be the Department of International Relations. There is nothing suspicious about that, it being routine for students to apply to several departments before they find the right home for their project. Nobody at any time tried to twist my arm or suggest that it was in the LSE's  (or the IIM 's) financial interest to accept Gaddafi. It was all very low key, routine , banal. 

It seems to me that the exercise of power in  universities is like that. You rarely have to exert it explicitly. You just set the ball rolling and somebody somewhere will probably follow the line of least resistance without being told to do so. This is very convenient because it makes plausible deniability a piece of cake.