Earlier this year the University of East London’s Child Online Harms Policy Think Tank, launched in the House of Lords. At that launch, I first properly heard a phrase I’d only half-registered before, but which I now can’t stop thinking about: “escaping the matrix.”
For some young people, especially those immersed in online influencer culture, the phrase signals a rejection of conformity – a desire to think critically about the systems they’ve inherited. In its healthiest form, it’s scepticism. But in darker online spaces – the so-called “manosphere” – that questioning turns toxic. The “matrix” becomes a conspiracy; feminism is blamed for personal hardship; and traditional institutions, universities included, are dismissed as irrelevant or even hostile.
Here’s the irony: many of the same influencers peddling these anti-institution narratives are running their own “universities” – online courses, masterclasses, mentorships. The hunger to learn hasn’t gone away. What’s being rejected isn’t learning – in fact, more 18-year-olds than ever entered higher education this year – but the institutions seen to control it.
So, what should universities make of this moment? The answer is not to bend to the whims of misogynist influencers, but to reflect on why so many young people feel alienated from formal education. What is the role of higher education in a world where disaffection is marketed as enlightenment? And how might we create – and communicate – a post-matrix university that feels worth plugging into?
Build a better matrix
At UEL, we’ve been challenging ourselves on what “value” really means in a rapidly changing world. For us, that has meant a deep commitment to becoming a careers-first university. Over the last seven years, we’ve redesigned our curriculum and embedded employability into every aspect of the institution, aligning what we teach with the skills and opportunities our students need to thrive.
By embedding careers throughout study; forging deep, value-adding partnerships with employers; breaking down the barriers between learning, innovation and work; and developing validated, leaner and more predictive-of-success recruitment pipelines, we have lifted graduate employment rates by 25 percentage points in just five years, the fastest rise in England. Our enterprise support tells a similar story, as we have driven the sector’s fastest increase in graduate start-ups, with a 1000 per cent increase in businesses still active after three years.
This is not the only approach, nor the only vision for value. The government’s recent white paper encourages greater specialisation, and I have always believed that a diverse higher education sector is a strong one. But that diversity only thrives in a healthy ecosystem – not one pulling in all directions and competing for diminishing resources.
If universities are to prove their continuing value to students, graduates, families, government, businesses, and communities, we must work together. Just not in the same old ways. That is where government can play a smarter role: not by propping up legacy systems or mandating mergers, but by rewarding genuine innovation and collaboration.
Take employers
Research launched by UEL and London Economics at this year’s Labour Conference found that 97 per cent of businesses want closer partnerships with universities. Nearly nine in ten back a national digital “front door” – a single online platform connecting graduates and employers, streamlining recruitment, and supporting lifelong professional development.
Our students tell us they don’t just want a graduate job – they want a graduate career. Students are not just job seekers; they are job creators too. Meeting that ambition means building systemic partnerships that align degrees with the demands of a changing generation; innovative, connected investment in practice-based education; and giving employers confidence that universities are developing the higher skilled and enterprising talent they need.
Graduate recruitment has become a hall of mirrors: AI-generated applications screened by AI filters, relying on crude, out-dated proxies for talent that do not predict new routes for success. Real, diverse potential is lost in this algorithmic echo chamber and the approach is – at least in part – contributing to a 59 per cent increase in applications per graduate vacancy in just one year. The current model is working for too few: graduates underemployed, employers frustrated, trust eroded.
By listening to what students and businesses are telling us, even when those truths are uncomfortable, we can respond with something better: an education that is relevant, transformative, and visibly worth the investment of time, trust, and money; together with the collaborative recruitment practices that succeed both for future talent and the businesses that need them.
That, to me, is the essence of the “post-matrix university”: one that closes the gap between institution and individual, between learning and livelihood, between aspiration and outcome. It’s a university that earns trust not through authority, but through authenticity – proving that education isn’t an escape from reality, but a way to change it.
