This week on the podcast MI5 has warned universities that UK higher education has become a “prime target for foreign states and hostile actors” – so what are the risks and how should the sector respond to growing concerns about security and defence?
Plus what a potential Labour leadership change could mean for higher education, and Reform’s threat to withhold funding from Welsh universities over free speech.
With Paul Kett, Group CEO and Vice Chancellor at London South Bank University, Ben Vulliamy, Executive Director at the Association of Heads of University Administration, Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Mark Leach, Editor-in-Chief at Wonkhe.
On the site:
Intelligence agencies provide briefings on foreign interference
Was there a freedom of speech breach at Bangor?
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Transcript (auto-generated)
Mark Leach: It’s the Wonkhe Show. We’re talking about why vice-chancellors were at MI5 this week and universities’ broader role in defence and security. There’s been a fresh wobble at the top of Labour – what does it mean for universities? And Reform rattles sabres over free speech – culture war or constitutional clash? It’s all coming up.
Debbie McVitty: And I guess I’m curious whether there might be a cadre of some in universities who would say, well, universities shouldn’t be acting on behalf of government in terms of security. But I think there’s a real threat to our actual democratic processes and our historic freedoms and all of that stuff as well. So I think it’s really important, perhaps, when understanding that it’s both.
Mark Leach: Welcome back to The Wonkhe Show, your weekly way into this week’s higher education news, policy and analysis. I’m your host Mark Leach and here’s to the facts over this week’s news. As usual, we have three excellent guests. In Elephant and Castle, it’s Paul Kett, Group CEO and Vice-Chancellor at London South Bank University. Paul, your highlight of the week, please.
Paul Kett: So this week it was particularly getting out and about on campus and enjoying campus life after many years of working adjacent to the sector, now in it. So I spent the day attending our Future Fest, which was a careers and employability event for our students, and I got to introduce the wonderful Sir Trevor Phillips as one of our guests – the broadcaster and national treasure.
Mark Leach: Lovely. And in Yorkshire it’s Ben Villami, Executive Director at the Association of Heads of University Administration. Ben, your highlight of the week please.
Ben Villami: Hello. My highlight of the week was launching, after about six months’ work, the AHUA organisational efficiency maturity assessment – all commissioned by Universities UK to try and help universities to really think about their long-term sustainability and effectiveness.
Mark Leach: And in London is Debbie McVitty, Editor of Wonkhe. Highlight of the week, please.
Debbie McVitty: Well, I’m very excited to read said maturity assessment, but I think the big thing for me this week was a really lovely visit I had over to our friends at De Montfort University, where I heard about their block teaching model, met with the SU, had some really, really great conversations and generally left feeling very optimistic about the shape of the sector.
Security and defence
Mark Leach: So yes, we start the week with security and defence. Debbie, what is happening?
Debbie McVitty: Yep. So, well, as the Telegraph would have it, university leaders were “hauled” into MI5 to be given a briefing on all the risks arising to universities from hostile states. I’m not sure that any hauling was actually involved. This is something that does happen very occasionally – not frequently, but very occasionally – when the government feels that there are concerns that university leaders need to know about.
So foreign interference can include things like steering or censoring research and teaching, but it can also involve things like influencing decisions about collaborations, looking to try and influence appointments, or to gain access to people or knowledge. And this is something that appears to be on the rise and something that MI5 chiefs would be very keen for universities to be very thoughtful about how they handle it.
So Jackie Smith has announced a new academic interference reporting route. DfE is investing £3 million in that. And there will be a new advisory service to help universities navigate what is an extremely complicated space, I think, and set to only get more complicated.
Mark Leach: Right, so Paul, we had some analysis about this on Wonkhe – James Code called it the “strategic ambiguity” that’s been going on for years, where universities can collaborate with whoever they want, but obviously risk being chastised when or if they get it wrong. Do you think that this week’s announcements and this big engagement has helped the situation?
Paul Kett: So I absolutely do think it’s helped the situation, but I don’t think it was really about that sort of one-off event. And as one of those subject to the – as the Telegraph would have it – the “hauling”, I certainly didn’t feel hauled.
I think over the last five years or so, perhaps a bit longer, actually security and defence is a really good example of where I think the sector and government have been working well together. And actually, I speak to this partly from when I was at the DfE co-chairing a group with the sadly late Peter Gregson to think about how we manage these issues, these risks better – that led to the creation of things like the RCAT, which is the research advisory teams that support universities.
I think this has sort of gone back and there’s a foreign interference angle, I think, coming back up the agenda partly. We had the high-profile case at Sheffield Hallam last year and I think the pivot towards the foreign interference rather than the kind of trusted research side is interesting, timely. I think there’s a maturity needed that we don’t overreact, but that we do have sensible conversations like the one last week, the new reporting mechanism to make sure we’ve got that dialogue. I think it’s actually an example of sector and government working well together, which we probably don’t do enough.
Mark Leach: Ben, there’s this £80 million defence skills investment. It’s tied to this new defence university alliance, which no one knows very much about in public at least. But how comfortable should we be about that kind of conditionality set by government on where funding goes?
Ben Villami: Well, I’m not entirely sure the conditions have been set just yet, if I’m totally honest. But I mean, I absolutely agree with Paul that this isn’t something we should feel hauled over or that it’s a reflection necessarily on universities. I think it’s a reflection on the kind of global agenda.
We are all living in an increasingly divisive information environment and that’s firmly linked to issues of national security. And universities, because of the nature of our business – we are in the business of creating and sharing intelligence, that’s ultimately what we do – so inevitably, we are one of many vehicles who are at the cutting edge of this divisive information environment that has risks and indeed opportunities attached to it.
And so I don’t think it’s a new thing that universities are in a space where there are risks about the information that we create and socialise, if you want. But with new technologies, those risks are increasing and we need to rethink. Are we monitoring that in the right way? Are we watching and reporting on it in the right way?
So I see this as a good thing, but not without risk. And I don’t think there’s anybody who wants universities to become kind of data centres with rigid walls around them where people can’t come in and explore new ideas and exchange information and connect with people from all across the world. We want those things to happen, but we also need to be able to make sure that we’re trusted information providers rather than points of vulnerability in this kind of global information network.
Paul Kett: I’m really pleased that this is a topic on the show today because I think we don’t debate the role of higher education in security and defence enough. And I think we have an incredibly important role to play. The research that we do, the talent that we provide – all is a key part of our national resilience.
And so I think initiatives like – as Ben said, I think we need the detail on what the funding looks like in reality and how it’ll be allocated – but the fact that there’s an embracing of the contribution that the university sector makes, that we should be debating about how we’re most effectively coordinating and contributing to that effort, I think is to be welcomed.
I think that at London South Bank University, we have a big pedigree in engineering and health, both of which are really important to security and defence. We chair, through our PVC for research and innovation, the London Defence and Security cluster. But we don’t talk about these things as much as we should do and think about that role in the national conversation. And there’s a really interesting piece my colleague and friend at City, Anthony Finkelstein, wrote about that important contribution. And I think we should think about how we’re having that conversation about our role more generally in this space.
Debbie McVitty: You know, the way we’re in this kind of landscape where I think universities are under financial pressure and sort of thinking about how to recalibrate operating models in light of that. And people say a lot, oh, well, we need to be agile. And I always kind of think I’m not entirely sure what agile means necessarily – perhaps I’ve just not read enough kind of strategy books.
But I think this is one of those examples where the idea of agility becomes very, very important because the nature of the threat, I think, is always evolving. The spaces where foreign entities might be interested is always evolving.
And I think Paul’s right – this is a maturity model. This is work that has been going on for a long time. I think we are well past the age where lone academics are wandering the world as sole actors, building relationships that then turn out to be problematic. Hopefully, that world has moved on in most cases.
But there’s still, I think, a risk where you have individuals who are very motivated by financial incentives because they want to advance their research and do interesting projects with external actors, without full awareness of the risks because it’s a fast-changing environment. And the kind of ways that sometimes universities sort of support people to understand this – you do need to really stay ahead, I think. And I think that is an interesting management question in some ways.
I don’t know whether this falls into kind of Paul’s camp or Ben’s camp in terms of who in the institution has to take ownership of saying, how do we continuously evolve our understanding of this landscape in relation to our portfolio? But I think there could be learnings here for other parts of the university as well.
Ben Villami: Debbie, I think you allude to how the world has changed really, really well. I’m thinking of daft novels I read about the 1940s where spies were deeply inserted into Cambridge University. The way you would manage that risk pre-internet would be radically different from the way you would manage the risks of foreign interference in 2026. That’s a given.
And I suppose that’s what I mean about the world. The interest in this subject is about the world changing. It’s about new technologies and new data and energy wars and global economies and the interconnectedness between different nations and so on and so on. And it’s kind of saying, well, how agile in the modern world are we to this? Or are we still reading our novels and trying to find the spy who’s in the college? That era – that isn’t the risk anymore.
Debbie McVitty: Yeah, it really isn’t. And I think there are two distinct issues in this. One is – which I think where we have seen a real maturing over recent years – that sort of research security, how we take those decisions on research partnerships. All universities have strong governance, the links to the advisory services, the RCAT and so on.
When we talk about foreign interference, it’s about that sort of malign influence – trying to, through coercion, through deception, trying to influence decision making. Actually, I think there is an additional vulnerability, I think, to Debbie’s point on the financial challenge.
Paul Kett: Institution X in country Y phones me up and says, I’d like to create a new research program with you – twenty million quid. Am I more likely to be influenced by that in a time of significant financial constraints? And when through that dialogue, they say, oh, well, the one condition is you appoint this academic to lead it – that’s the point where you’re tipping into this malign influence.
And so I think it’s being mindful of that and our vulnerabilities and that we are a target. But this isn’t happening everywhere all the time. It’s about avoiding that naivety, about being open to things that look a bit too good to be true, taking advice at the right time and recognising we are subject to that kind of interest.
Mark Leach: We’re not asked about China because the Prime Minister is just back from his visit. The big mega embassy or whatever it’s called has been approved in London. And obviously, UK universities are quite exposed when it comes to international recruitment from China. And of course, on research. So do you think – how much of this is a kind of China-specific issue? And how much should that be part of the conversation then?
Ben Villami: I feel sure it’ll be part of the conversation but I don’t think it’s a China-specific issue. I think there is evidence of challenges to the UK security from all over the world and for all sorts of reasons.
I guess as the UK tries to foster good-quality relationships right across the world – and so it opens up pathways and projects and investments and so on and so on, something that the country needs, frankly – that will increase risk. Again, not just for universities, it increases risk for the UK.
And I go back to what I said before – that there is an opportunity here for universities to be kind of bastions of truth who cut through that divisive information environment, which I think is one of the biggest threats to national security. And if actually we can create trusted sources of information that know how to handle data and intelligence and connection really, really well – and I actually do think we’re better than some other institutions about how we handle those relationships – actually we might be a real assistance rather than a vulnerability in the UK defence infrastructure.
Debbie McVitty: I think something quite critical here is actually the briefing talked about security – and that’s really important – but also talked about threats to democracy. And it’s exactly what Ben’s talking about.
Some of this is about information-based warfare and the ways – but also the ways that influence isn’t necessarily about a sort of initial quid pro quo. It can sometimes be about building relationships, about getting access, about shaping the framing of how things are asked in ways that can then shape policy agendas. So it is very pernicious, potentially.
And you have to, I think, as Paul was saying, be extremely cunning to really, really look for the thing that may, in the future, set up a problematic situation that you then are basically – because you’ve got actors looking to gain leverage.
And I guess I’m curious whether there would be a cadre of some in universities who would say, well, universities shouldn’t be acting on behalf of government in terms of security. But I think there’s a real threat to our actual democratic processes and our historic freedoms and all of that stuff as well. So I think it’s really important perhaps when thinking about this, that we understand that it’s both.
Paul Kett: I really echo that. And I think it’s far too easy to have the conversation about defence and think about very traditional views of what warfare looks like. And security and defence is a much more complex geopolitical set of issues now.
And there are areas of research which on the face of it are not obviously related to security and defence, but issues around resource shortages are key areas that will lead to conflict in the future. Obvious issues around protecting critical national infrastructure from flood risk will be as relevant to keeping the lights on here as they will be from a security risk point of view.
So it’s incredibly entwined and I think – think about our contribution to that sort of national resilience rather than just thinking about security and defence as something that’s about that traditional view of what warfare is. And of course that goes to the values and democracy, but I think it’s really practical stuff as well.
Bloggers of the week
Gemma Peacock: Hi, I’m Gemma Peacock, an EAP lecturer at the University of Reading. And this week on Wonkhe, I’ve been blogging about how external examining in pathway and English for academic purposes provision is being squeezed into tax categories that were never designed for it.
HMRC guidance draws a distinction between undergraduate examining and postgraduate viva work. But pathway and EAP programs don’t actually fit either model. As a result, providers are interpreting the rules differently, often moving examiners onto PAYE without adjusting their fees.
So my argument is that it’s not just an administrative issue. It raises real questions about the sustainability of the external examining workforce in a part of the sector that universities increasingly rely on.
Charlotte Von Essen: Hello everyone, my name’s Charlotte Von Essen and this week on Wonkhe I have been writing about authentic assessment and particularly reflecting on authentic assessment in relationship to accountability.
And in my piece I write that authentic assessment is a good thing – we probably need more of it. It’s great to have assessment based in experiential or professional practices, but it’s also very helpful to think about authentic assessment combined with elements of accountability.
Particularly making assessment more defensible so students can justify their decisions or explain their reasoning. It also needs to be traceable, so we want to blend elements of process-based assessment, so that we can see how thinking develops over time. And finally, it needs to be answerable – so students need to have the opportunities to respond to challenge, to questioning, to critique from their peers, from their teachers, and possibly from practitioners as well.
So really what I’m saying is a more layered approach to assessment to really strengthen it and make it fit for the modern world. Thanks.
Labour’s troubles
Mark Leach: Now, the Labour Party is in a mess again. Paul, what is happening?
Paul Kett: Well, Mark, I think depending on which commentator you read, Keir Starmer is heading to the exits – just not quite yet. And so I think considered opinion is, after the events of – well, various issues around the party – but brought to a head recently with the handling of Mandelson and the Ned O’Neill affair, real disquiet, but no one putting their head above the parapet to challenge him.
So looks like he’s going to hang on until the local elections at least, through to May. But I think it is worth remembering we were here with Theresa May, we were here with Gordon Brown to an extent, and they hang on for a lot longer than seemed plausible at the time. But it does feel more likely than not that come the May elections, we’ll see a leadership challenge.
So what does that mean for higher education in particular? Well, who are the leading candidates? It sort of feels like Wes Streeting is the name mentioned most, slightly to the sort of centrist ground of the party – Blairites in tradition. And then, of course, Angela Rayner more on the sort of softer left side.
Considered opinion seems to be a move to the soft left is more where the party is. I think, given where the polling is on Reform and so on, I think it’d be wrong to rule out some to the sort of right of centre – the Shabana Mahmoods and so on.
But either way, I think the big question for higher education is: if there is a change of leader, will we actually move out of the sort of relative benign neglect in policy terms that we’ve seen towards higher education? And I fear not. Student finance might be going up the political agenda, but it’s extremely expensive to do anything about in the near term. I think the best we might hope for is that we get another kind of big review kicked off that takes us to the next election.
Mark Leach: Very good. So it’s not going to stop us speculating, is it Debbie? I mean, if we’re going to see a soft left resurgence partly because of the Mandelson scandal and some of the people associated with it – do you think that’s going to have anything meaningful? I mean, as Paul says, it’s very difficult to do anything in the short term about student finance in particular – that’s the thing that’s been garnering the headlines. But is there anything about the soft left platform that we know about, and the characters involved – thinking Ed Miliband and his quest to lower fees to six thousand pounds, and the things Angela Rayner has said about education? Is there anything we can glean from what that might mean?
Debbie McVitty: I think I would caution heavily against taking what individuals said when in shadow roles or indeed fighting elections, as was the case with Ed Miliband, to be anything that is deeply held or is likely to see a resurgence.
I do think that there’s something quite interesting if we see it. I think Ed Miliband – and Danny Finkelstein wrote about this in the Times – the name there is not mentioned for leader, but could potentially have quite a significant role as a bit of a kingmaker.
What the key there really is less about the individuals, although obviously if you had a sort of soft left cabinet, their position on things would be influential. It’s more about the kind of real alignment to what becomes perceived as the core Labour vote.
So at the minute, under Morgan McSweeney, the party was pursuing a strategy of saying, let’s pursue the working class Red Wall voters – they voted for the Conservatives in 2019 under Boris Johnson. They’re kind of pivoting towards Reform right now. We can win them back if we just sort of try and triangulate with some of these more kind of right-wing, more sort of socially conservative agendas.
I think under a sort of soft left regime – I think this is something that the party, the parliamentary party, is really struggling with. And because their heart is more with the graduates living in cities, we might sort of see something – a bit of a revenge of the anywheres under a soft left leadership.
But I think, critically, what then happens in terms of the electoral mathematics of that? There is a kind of critique that Labour is actually losing support on the left – it supports the Greens a little bit, the Lib Dems. Would that actually form a sufficiently large electoral coalition to win the election?
And I think no matter who’s in charge, I think the issue remains the same. It’s about economic growth and it’s about cost of living and it’s about living standards. You might see some kind of more narrativising around student loan repayments because that’s the sort of core issue for that putative core Labour vote. You might see a sort of softening of language around immigration. You might see more emphasis on climate change and net zero targets and all of that stuff. But I think what you won’t see is any kind of fundamental shift in the core job – which would be to deliver growth.
The issue, I think, for universities will be, again, it’s exactly the same job. If you can convince the ministers in charge that under the current policy regime, you’re actively being hampered from delivering on growth – for whatever reason, because of funding, because of systems and regulation or whatever it is. And I think that the universities should have quite a strong case to make in some of those areas – that should prompt a meaningful engagement from whoever’s in charge at the time. But that is the case that will need to be made.
Ben Villami: Well, I quite like the idea that Miliband is busily carving a new limestone set of pledges. I just don’t believe he is.
And I think the decision of the Scottish Labour leader to, you know, ask a question about the suitability of Starmer – I think says more about the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections than it does, or at least as much about the upcoming Scottish parliamentary elections as it does about Starmer.
And there was this kind of massive rush. There were a million Substacks and podcasts that were speculating before actually the cabinet had had a chance to sit down and meet and talk about its response. It was just too early.
And I actually think the public still want a bit of stability and calm. They’re not ready for another kind of programme of Liz Truss excesses and so forth. I’m not arguing that there isn’t pressure on Starmer. There absolutely is. There are legitimate questions about Starmer. But actually the UK and perhaps higher education in particular needs some of that sharp focus on adding the detail to that slightly benign neglect that Paul mentioned.
It was only a few months ago we were all looking at the white paper and saying, well, there’s some quite nice noises in there but we need the meat on the bone. Well, we certainly haven’t got the meat on the bone yet – and we’re not more likely to get it if we’re fanning the flames of political crisis and changes in political leadership.
So I think there’s a real risk for HE here that we take our eye off the ball in terms of building out good-quality, long-term, sustainable, high-impact policy for higher education because we’re busy wondering about who’s next in line for the throne.
Paul Kett: For slightly different reasons, I agree with Ben on what we should be doing. And my sort of different reason is: even if we do see a change of leadership, I can’t see higher education kind of moving up and having a sort of particularly new and fresh policy agenda behind it.
I think if it’s Rayner, the focus on tertiary join-up and collaboration will continue to be important – a central theme in the white paper – the connection to place, collaboration rather than competition. All of those kind of themes, they kind of hold.
And as Debbie says, we need to be careful about not over-relying on what politicians might have said in the past in terms of their political views. I don’t think there’s any sense that higher education is going to be a top policy priority for any of the prospective candidates. Streeting is the one person with that NUS pedigree. But he’s not really said very much.
Debbie McVitty: I think the more things change, the more things stay the same. I was just thinking about what everyone’s saying. More than the different factions – because there’s actually more consensus about HE and skills across Labour and the Conservatives anyway than might be visible to the naked eye.
So on international students, I think both parties have been extremely robust. And on skills, you’ve got Starmer talking about two-thirds participation, which isn’t really that different a policy to the big focus on vocational and rebalancing – and it’s just like different language that the Conservative ministers used up until the year before last, isn’t it?
Mark Leach: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that we see is – at the minute, I don’t know if this is a sort of permanent shift and I guess Paul will have views on this – but I do think policy sort of follows trends rather, to some extent. And particularly you see that in higher education.
So that kind of broad consensus that the system needs to be able to serve a broad base of needs – from the post-18 highly vocational all the way up to the highly academic sort of level eight stuff, and it needs to be able to accommodate that – that probably pure markets is not the best way to organise that. And also there needs to be continued effort to ensure that people have access to the sorts of courses that they might wish to study and the sorts of opportunities that those courses might lead to.
I think all of that – there’s sort of enormous consensus about it because that’s a sort of global trend towards massification of higher education and the need to educate your population to a higher standard so that you can grow your businesses and navigate complexity and do all that good stuff. So it really is just about what – and then what you’ve got is the growth challenge and the global economic challenge, and needing to deploy your universities in ways that support that.
And I guess finally the other side of the triangle is: oh, and by the way, we have very little money to actually cause that to happen. So the policy challenge remains, I think, very similar across the Anglosphere, probably really very similar across Europe, although you’ve got some very different systems in play there.
And the flavour of the policy agenda that you get arising from that is going to perhaps look slightly different or be framed slightly differently depending on what the party in charge wants to say and how it wants to frame what sort of party it is and what sort of government it is. But that really is the quite fundamental thing that needs to be resolved.
And we’re in this kind of transition process at the minute, I think. And we’ll all land somewhere, I think in part because universities decide – and higher education institutions decide – to do things within the frameworks that are available to them rather than because government initiates a large-scale agenda to deliver transformation.
Paul Kett: And I think this goes a bit back to Ben’s point as well on the meat on the bones of the white paper. So I think your hypothesis around that sort of policy trends, Debbie, I think is a really helpful way to think about it.
If you look at what’s really at the heart of the different philosophies between where the Conservative government was and where the Labour government is – it’s really about, is it the sort of competition market approach or is it about this more collaborative, more by-design approach that the post-16 white paper signals but doesn’t actually make any substantive policy changes to give effect to? And I think that’s the sort of place where that’s contested – about how you give effect to that policy trend, if you like.
The other bit, which I think is really important in electoral cycle terms, is – I think we’ve seen coming up the agenda – that sort of fairness challenge around student finance just clearly getting cut-through. And we talked about it on the show last week.
The other bit, which I think we are far, far, far from out of the woods on, is the financial challenge facing the sector. And the closer we get to the election, the more we are going to see the impacts of that financial challenge – whether that’s in institutions failing, whether it’s more campus closures like we saw at Southend. And that’s the point at which this will start to get kind of cut-through at a political level. But it will probably be heading towards the next election rather than preemptive policy change from this government, I fear.
Ben Villami: Can I ask you a question, Paul, that’s kind of faintly related? But for some time, I’ve argued that political acumen is increasingly a critical capability for all university leaders. I think, perhaps historically, it would have been seen as a VC-exclusive activity. But increasingly, I think chairs and boards and full executives need to have that skill.
But put that aside – if we are now in this kind of period of political chaos, let’s call it – rapid dramatic lurches from one issue to another – should universities’ tactic be to lean deeper into understanding and connection to the rhythms of political change? Or should it be to say, look, that’s too chaotic for us. We’re a bit more grown up than that. We’re going to somehow sit outside of it and just carry on being great academics and research engines. What should be the sector’s response?
Paul Kett: That’s a really interesting question, Ben. I feel it doesn’t have a kind of glib answer.
The heart of it I think is: we need to be able to sustain and maintain our sort of public licence to operate irrespective of the changing political landscape. I think that means what we shouldn’t be doing is trying to – for want of a better expression – kind of repaint the colour of the door to match that of the political party in the ascendancy.
What we should be able to do is tell our story in a way that speaks to changing political priorities, and that withstands some of that. So I think the political acumen, the ability to speak to different agendas – and I don’t mean this in a being-all-things-to-all-people sense – but at least explain our purpose in a way that speaks to where people are rather than just telling people we’re a good thing, which I fear is slightly the trap we’ve fallen into in the past. Quite big numbers on economic impact and so on – and that’s not what wins the argument. It’s how do we connect.
Secret Life of Students
Jim Dickinson: Hi, Jim from the team here. AI hasn’t just changed how students write essays. It’s forced us to confront what learning actually means.
As the Secret Life of Students returns for its eighth year, we’re launching major new research revealing how students are really using AI, discussing what “graduate ready” means in 2026, and showcasing institutions already reimagining assessment for authentic learning at scale.
Taking a step beyond what has felt for many like a moment of crisis, we’re looking at it as a chance for creativity and a chance to reimagine what higher education is actually for. To strip away assessments that measure memorisation rather than meaning-making, and to design learning experiences that develop capabilities no algorithm can replicate.
At the event, you’ll explore how AI can enhance rather than replace human learning. What that means for everyone – with a new government white paper reshaping the landscape from oracy initiatives to work-based learning at scale – the Secret Life of Students is the event you need.
With institutions under pressure to demonstrate genuine learning gain, the timing couldn’t be sharper. This is the essential gathering for anyone working on student experience, teaching practice or education policy, where you’ll get evidence, not platitudes; practical strategies, not theoretical debates; and a vision of higher education that’s more human, not less.
That’s the Secret Life of Students – Learning to be Human in an Age of AI. March 2026, tickets are available now – book on wonkhe.com/events.
Reform and free speech
Mark Leach: So Reform are being banned from campus – or are they, Ben? What’s going on?
Ben Villami: Yeah, so Reform has announced that it will introduce new laws in Wales to protect free speech in higher education. And senior members of the party have suggested that funding should be withheld from universities that do not – subject to Reform’s judgment – uphold free speech.
This follows controversy over at Bangor University’s Debating Society, which declined to invite a Reform MP to speak to students.
We now know that this story stems from a somewhat manufactured scenario where Reform contacted the student debating society to propose that they come to the student society’s event to run a Q&A on Reform’s policies – and that generous self-invitation to come and speak was rejected.
Similar, I suspect, to what would have happened if I’d have written to Reform to tell them that I’d like to come speak at their next Reform party conference to run a Q&A on why Andrea Jenkyns should never sing in Senedd ever again.
But we are in this era of loud noises that aren’t entirely in tune with the kind of nuances and sensitivities of free speech expectations and legislation – legislation which of course doesn’t actually apply in the same way in Wales anyway.
Mark Leach: So, Paul, this is all quite familiar, isn’t it? It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these so-called bannings – but it turns out not to be. But a lot of those things were dressed up into instances used as justification for the free speech act when it happened, didn’t it? So obviously people are worried about Reform coming to power – many people in the sector are worried about Reform coming to power. And the Welsh elections on the horizon – Reform is likely to do quite well. So there’s a lot of concern and consternation because if we’re heading towards the culture wars and threats to remove funding that we’ve seen from the Trumpian playbook, there’s obviously going to be disquiet, isn’t there?
Paul Kett: Yeah. I mean, Mark, I sort of take two things from this.
One is it is really depressingly familiar in terms of the way in which the free speech debate is being used to manufacture kind of moments like this. And Ben put it wonderfully – I look forward to his Q&A session at the Reform conference.
The really depressing thing is I think fundamentally all the time we’re spending talking about these kind of performative free speech issues, what we’re not doing is spending time focusing on how do we support our students really effectively – make sure that they genuinely hear from a range of different voices, support dialogue on campus. All of those really important things which we don’t seem to spend any time talking about – we instead talk about these performative things. But that’s just the first element of it.
But I think the second element – which you are talking about, that sort of “is this from the Trump playbook” – I think what we really don’t know is what the Reform policy platform is going to be in terms of education. And I think it’s really important that we build an understanding of that. We seek to work with them to influence them in the same way that we try and work with and influence all of the other political parties.
And I think my sense is we’ve been finding that hard as a sector so far. I think some people have managed to build some relationships and I think we need to keep working at that – not least because if they are following a bit of a Trump playbook, what’s the number one lesson from the US when you go and talk to their institutions and their sector groups and all of that?
We didn’t build the relationships, we didn’t engage and build the dialogue with them in opposition, and we’re really struggling now that Trump is in power to have that dialogue. And there’s a very, very small number of exceptions in terms of chancellors or presidents in the US who have managed to have a sensible debate there. So I think that’s the lesson for me – how do we ensure we’ve got that sort of dialogue with Reform to try and understand and influence their policy platform?
Debbie McVitty: I mean, on the point about kind of lessons learned – I think there’s a lesson for universities here. And there are some for students that I’ll come to in a second, but there are lessons for universities.
That overly relying on simply distancing the institution from its student societies and students’ individual decision-making – it just doesn’t wash. The public don’t buy it, the journalists don’t buy it, the political parties don’t buy it.
So while it may be true that there is a degree of separation between the independent decision-making of a student society versus the institutional decision-making, I think leaning into that space is futile and probably just fans the playbook again.
I think talking about the way that the university tries to understand and kind of build the quality and interconnectedness of the students’ union’s constitution and its own institutional constitutional arrangements is probably a better way of talking truthfully about the relationship and interplay.
I guess my advice – in the learning, I think, for clubs and societies – is that when they choose to reject those, as I called it earlier, self-invitations, they probably should be a little bit careful about the language that they use and the way that they reject it because they kind of know it’s going to be used as a political hot potato, right?
Stressing that the student society gets many requests for a wide variety of debate subjects each year, and it chooses to prioritise those ideas that come from its own students – that seems like a really sensible, legitimate way of saying, not anyone can rock up whenever they want to talk about whatever they want. And we do try and host plurality of views for and with our students.
So I think there are some lessons here because we’re going to keep seeing, I suspect, more and more of these approaches.
One other slightly different thing I’d say is that it did strike me as a little bit ironic that Reform are using this particular playbook in the same week that there are quite extensive rumours of alleged use of super-injunctions by Reform.
Mark Leach: And Debbie, I mean, this question about how we engage Reform – I mean, how is the question? And it is genuinely my question given we don’t know what the policy platform is and the personnel seems to change a lot. And does this come back to the sector’s reputation? Is there a way of framing it that way, or is this just a one-off kind of political engagement that needs to happen?
Debbie McVitty: Well, I think this is the week in which Universities UK has launched its Future Universities project, which is trying to take that macro approach of thinking through what the big challenges are for universities and how universities can become future-ready in light of, specifically right now, the changing graduate job market.
No one’s saying that universities don’t produce graduates that are ready to do things, but of course the job market is changing and AI is a factor in that. The economy is a factor in that. Universities simply need to look at what they’re doing and make sure that the education and the support that they provide to graduates is calibrated to the change.
So that is a useful piece of work that needs to happen, and it’s about that sort of macro narrative. But it’s kind of the other side of that – and I think this is where Viv Stern, Chief Executive of UUK, wrote usefully before Christmas. She articulated exactly what Paul was talking about, which was advice from someone in America – I believe he came from the American Council on Education. And he was articulating the kind of nature of the conversations you might have with your, you know, notionally political enemies.
And it’s not just about listening to the kind of broad-scale criticisms and trying to identify that grain of truth and trying to address the problem. It’s about quite kind of sitting down with people and saying, what is it that you think – what would convince you that, you know, A, that we’re not who you think we are? We’re not these kind of bastions of elitism captured by producer interest. We are here, we really want to deliver for our students, for our communities. What does that look like to you?
And that doesn’t mean that you need to then kind of transform into that thing. But we’re talking about individual people who we may fundamentally disagree with on many levels but who genuinely, I think, care about their areas. And so you have to have the conversation from that perspective.
I think I’d echo that. I mean, I think those students – absolutely, they had absolute right to say what they said. Was it politically well calibrated? Not really. But that’s also just going to keep happening, isn’t it? Institutions can’t stop their students from taking positions like that, if that’s what they want to do.
But there may be some sensible conversations to be had about tactics around handling those sorts of moments and what is likely to serve the bigger question of avoiding political polarisation.
The other thing I observed actually was – Ben, you pointed out the tactic of distancing oneself from the students is not very effective. I think similarly, the tactic of – I mean, David Kernohan sort of carefully explained on the site why this wasn’t a breach of the freedom of speech act, not least because that doesn’t apply in Wales, but also because even if it did, the various things had not been accomplished.
And I think it’s useful to know that, but actually it’s not necessarily the key thing. The thing that struck me actually was this morning, BBC reported that Welsh Reform leaders had sort of distanced themselves from the Reform leadership position that Bangor should be defunded.
And I think that’s also cause for positive – it is clear, I think, that those Welsh Reform leaders do not believe that the Welsh electorate wishes the University of Bangor to be defunded, whatever that means in policy terms, and felt that that was not necessarily a platform on which it could gain seats in the Senedd elections.
So I think it absolutely remains – this is about our communities and nations and the role of universities within those. And while you may agree or disagree about the nature of those institutions and what function they should be serving, you can absolutely agree on both sides that they should be making a contribution. And then you can kind of argue about how – and that is a much more productive conversation than the sort of technocratic “well, actually this doesn’t apply in this context” and all the rest of it.
Mark Leach: So that’s about it for this week. Remember to go in deep on anything we’ve discussed today – you’ll find links in the show notes on wonkhe.com. Don’t forget to subscribe – just search for The Wonkhe Show, wherever you get your podcasts.
So thanks so much to Debbie, Paul and Ben, and Michael Salmon for making it all happen behind the scenes. We’ll be back next week. Jim will be here. Until then – stay Wonkhe.