IT’S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME of the academic year. Up and down the country, universities receive piles of admissions applications; some edifying, others vomit-inducing. In due course, I hear, our progressive state will replace them with TikTok videos, which we, who are responsible for admitting the leaders of the future, will doubtless watch with equal pleasure, discernment, and most likely nausea. But for now, the time-honoured rhythms of the seasons run their course. After we’ve read the piles of applications, the mêlée commences: deciding which students to admit.
Th is reveals both the academic bandwidth of this year’s generation, and the true colours of some university academics and administrators. In the pages that follow, I shall set out what it would look like, were it honestly done, at a time when honesty seems to be in short supply.
Underneath universities’ dogmatic pursuits of agendas to widen “access” and strengthen “diversity and inclusion” lies an aporetic paradox that many academics are keen to obfuscate. Such agendas come at a very visible cost to students of lowering academic rigour and pastoral care, by failing to focus on the needs of the people we admit.
Today’s meaning of “diversity” has been contaminated, but it goes without saying that it must not mean “positive discrimination”. Different students have different needs. A university should not feel
