Are universities still relevant?
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Welcome to the LSE Events podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Good afternoon, everybody. Fantastic to see such a kind of some great attendance for this event this afternoon on LSE.

On the LSE Festival event, are universities still relevant? And I personally am hoping that the answer to that is yes. My name is Professor Emma McCoy and I am the Vice President and Pro Vice Chancellor for Education here at LSE. It's fantastic to see you all at this event, both those of you here in person and I know that we have an online audience as well.

The LSE Festival this year is Visions for the Future, taking place from Monday the 16th to Saturday the 21st of June. And there's a whole series of events exploring the threats and opportunities of the near and distant future and what a better world could look like.

So in addition to being Pro Vice Chancellor for Education here at LSE, I'm also a Professor of Statistics here at LSE and I am very pleased to welcome Dr Shamilia Mukeshchever, Professor Aaron Reeves, Dr Boris Wallbaum and Lord David Willetts to both our online audiences and the audience here in the room.

So I'm going to do very brief kind of bios of our panel today and then we'll come to some questions. So Shamilia is an LSE fellow in public policy at LSE. Her research focuses on the politics of higher education finance, such as the role of ideology and public opinion in the adoption of tuition fees, financial aid policies and government regulation of student numbers. Very relevant.

Aaron Reeves is a professor of sociology, again here at LSE, and his work studies the causes and consequences of social inequality with a focus on the political economy of health, welfare reform and processes of elite formation.

He is the co-editor of the British Journal of Sociology, and he's recently co-authored Born to Rule with Professor Sam Friedman, which analyzes the British elite and includes an investigation of elites' access to higher education. And he will hate me for saying this, but I was reading the reviews of the book, and James Marriott at the time starts his review with, thank God for Friedman and Reeves.

Although I gather there have been some maybe less glowing. Next, Boris. Very pleased to have Boris here. He's the founder and president of Forward College, a pan-European university launched in 2021 designed to develop all forms of human intelligences and skills.

The university has a vision to redefine higher education, realigning learning with the requirements of tomorrow's top jobs. Dr. Walban previously worked for the French government and in consulting at McKinsey and has been involved in various international organizations, including the United Nations, the Aspen Institute,

the Atlantic, how do you pronounce this? - Atlantic Bruker. - Bruker. And the German Marshall Fund of the United States. And in fact, we have some very close ties to Forward College as well.

David Willits is President of the Resolution Foundation and he served, as I'm sure you all know, he served as the Member of Parliament for Havant from 1992 to 2015 as Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014 and previously worked at HM Treasury and the Number 10 Policy Unit.

He is also chair of the UK Space Agency and the Foundation for Science and Technology. Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy and his book, A University Education, which I know he has a copy of. And I am hoping that many of you already have copies of this. It was published by Oxford University Press, a second edition of the book.

The second edition of his book, The Pinch on Fairness Between the Generations, was published in 2019. So today, the purpose of this panel is to explore the question, are universities still relevant? Higher education around the world is undergoing a series of rapid transformations, the effects of AI, emerging technologies, the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on today's job markets,

The complex global challenges that require, I believe, interdisciplinary attention and the rise of campuses as the site of contestation around free speech have all led to many questioning both the form and function of contemporary universities.

Today's panel discussion will consider different possible futures for universities and explore how the students, staff, private sector, governments and HE institutions themselves all play critical roles in defining the future of the university.

So for those social media users in the audience, the hashtag for today's event is #LSEFestival and I would ask you please to put your phones on silent so as not to disturb the event. This event is being recorded and hopefully we'll make it available as a podcast subject to the usual kind of technical requirements.

So the panel discussion will last 35 to 40 minutes. And I know that Lord Willetts needs to get away just a few minutes early. So we're going to try and keep time. And in fact, I'll probably ask now if there are burning questions from the audience when it gets to that point, please, I'll take the ones for Lord Willetts first as he needs to get away.

So 35 to 40 minutes of PAL discussion. I'm going to raise some questions and topics. After that, we should have around 15 to 20 minutes for Q&A. And it's your chance to put questions to the afternoon speakers.

For our online audiences, you can submit your questions via the Q&A feature and please indicate your name and affiliation. So for those of you here in the room, I'll let you know when we open the floor for questions. Please do raise your hand and I will try and select questions in a fair way and do let us know your name and affiliation too. Right, so let's start with the questions to the panel. And I'm going to start with...

The one really that speaks to the topic of the panel, the relevance of universities today. So why do you think we're experiencing a moment where the relevance of universities is being questioned by some? And what are the economic, political and social transformations you see as being the most important drivers for this? And I'm going to come to David Willis first.

Well, it's great to be here. It's great to be here making the case for universities. I think the reason why they certainly are tied in the media and public opinion against them, it's complicated, but it's partly their obvious targets for the populist revolt against the more people with the benefits of higher education who, as partly as a result of that, for example, enjoy higher earnings and are not always interested

We've not always designed public policies that properly help the people who haven't gone into higher education and often have lower earnings. So there's a populist anger and resentment. I think that's important. And I would say separately, there's a kind of economic phenomenon. If you increase the number of people going, gradually the marginal return for the marginal graduate falls. So average returns appear to fall, but actually it's still very worthwhile for the vast majority of people. So I think there's been that economic phenomenon.

If you look at the social science, I think it's pretty clear there's economic and non-economic gains, and they're both to individuals and to society. And finally, I think if you then look at public attitudes, the 87% of people who went to university then asked subsequently in their late 20s say that they do not regret they went to university.

They have some regrets, mainly about subject choice, which you may come to later, but they don't regret going to university. If you ask 25-year-olds who didn't go to university what they think, by the age of 25, 40% are already regretting that they didn't go. So whatever the media narrative, we should just remember those, that's the deep evidence of what people actually think of their inexperience.

Thank you, David. Anyone else would like to comment on this? I think jumping on that last point, actually, because I was someone who went to university in my mid-20s and by my early 20s had regretted the choice. I mean, I'd worked in call centres, I'd worked in labouring jobs, I'd done a variety of different things, which I had realised was not really for me. And it was a further education course, an access course, that got me to the grades that I needed to get into university because I did terribly at my A-levels.

And so I think that that thing that Lord Willetts is describing is really real. And I think on the other side of that, if you ask parents, there are different statistics on this depending on the survey, but if you ask parents whether they want their kids to go to university, it's over 80%, in some surveys even as much as 97%, that would want their children to go to university today. And so I think they're...

So there is on the one hand this like really strong demand I think from people to be able to attend at the same time as we have a kind of environment in which there are criticisms being made of those institutions and I don't think that all of those are unwarranted or unfounded but and should invite reflexivity from us as institutions but I think it is important to register that background that Lord Willits has mentioned and I think also if I may my personal experience. Thank you.

Boris, do you want to? Yeah, maybe if I can bring a little bit of friction. I think it's not only...

political problem. There is obviously a question around AI and the fact that now machines are more intelligent than we are or will become for some of you who are lucky to still be more intelligent than the machines. And I think it's a simple fact to understand. So this absurd question of why should we learn, it's really an absurd question, but still it is a question. I think it's also a question that there are voices that have become much more powerful

Everybody knows some altman, some know Dario from Antropik and so on, obviously Musk. And they were not in the headlines. You know, the Gates and the Jobs, they were on the headlines when new products were coming, but not in the political realm. And I think

They voice this very idea that AI is now here, that intelligence is embodied by machines and not by humans anymore. I think that's an objective. Maybe it's a bit of a strong word for a sociologist. But there is a real issue at stake, I think, also.

Sorry for taking the evidence, but... If I can add a bit more complexity into picture about public opinion about higher education specifically. So what we find in many surveys is that many people act

actually really want more vocational education. So if you ask which level of higher education we should invest more in, many people want more vocational education. While also a lot of parents want their children to go into higher education. They want more vocational education, but not for me or my children. So I think

It is all related to underlying complexity of higher education, finance, of the cost of higher education, what drives this cost, how do we define outcomes, how measurable they are, and also obviously a lot of uncertainty with artificial intelligence and all the other transformations that are going on right now as Boris was talking about.

Thank you. And I suppose, Boris, I'll come back to you on the AI point, because you kind of raised it as a challenge. So how do you think, I mean, how do we actually respond to that then? How do you think universities should adapt their approaches to be able to address that challenge? So, huge question, I mean, huge questions, actually, because this challenge is about the why of education. Why should we learn? What is it to be human? What is...

what is the core belief, what is the core ambition that we should build our education systems on. If our core belief is that we want to train people who are smart, who are intelligent, who are knowledgeable, then obviously we are putting ourselves in a situation where we will be competing with the machine.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't become intelligent, so I'm going a little bit deep before answering the questions. So there is a real deep question here that I think education systems at large, and universities in particular, cannot shy away from. What is the core ambition? If it's only cognitive intelligence, knowledge and reasoning, then I think it's not the right approach.

So it's kind of a cultural or anthropological question. Then there is a what. And the way we've approached it at Forward College is that obviously we need to be smart. We don't want machines to decide for ourselves because the decisions we make are informed by our intelligence, our understanding of the world. So obviously learning is very important, but we need much more and we will make a difference on the job market, but also as citizens, also as human beings.

developing also the social, emotional and practical intelligences. Howard Gardner has a taxonomy of eight forms of intelligences. But the fact that universities focus 90% of their resources, I mean, their academic resources, because the student life is much more than that, hopefully, but not always.

So it's very important to have intentional training on these social skills, emotional, because they are specifically human. Because when about practical intelligence, what do we do when we don't know? And that happens quite a lot, I guess, in politics. As we know. So and that's very important. So how do you confront your students with the unknown, with exploration?

And the third is about the how, but the how is not the most challenging part. So how do you feed in AI into education? What we've done at Forward College is that we've not only given access to Chai2BT+ and Cloud and all the models,

But also we've asked them to, if they wanted to have this free access, to have access to the logs so that we could see how they would play with it. Anonymize, of course, so we do research with that. I think it's very important. And now we are asking them to volunteer to de-anonymize their logs so that their conversation with AI becomes part of the conversation with their fellows.

And I think it is very important to not only know that AI is there, but also how can we bring it into the pedagogy. Anybody else want to come? So, Shmelia, you want to come in on AI? Yeah, thank you. I think I really agree about the importance of social skills, about the importance of communication. That's really core human skills that need to be taught at universities. But I would really like to challenge you about the importance of highly specialized knowledge that's being taught at universities. Yes.

Because what we know about AI, as it is at the moment, obviously there is a lot of uncertainty about how AI is going to be developed, about the use cases of AI, about how transformative it's actually going to be. But I think there is some importance of specialized knowledge because we also know that AI hallucinates a lot.

And it's extremely difficult for someone who doesn't have this kind of knowledge to spread where AI hallucinates. So I think maybe the importance of this knowledge teaching is maybe even more important than before. And this is exactly where this kind of specialized knowledge teaching is happening, because universities are

at the forefront of research and finding out, discussing all these new ideas that are happening. At least that's the intention. Aaron, any take on this? Yeah, I mean, maybe just to pick up on this point exactly. I think what maybe AI does within the university is raise some challenging questions for some areas more than others, where there are highly specialised forms of knowledge which often are associated with particular kinds of credentials that I suspect are

will be hard to disrupt in the future. I'm thinking particularly here of something like medicine. Whereas actually my own discipline in sociology, I think is perhaps more open to the kinds of challenges that AI poses

And so it does invite the kinds of reflection that I think Boris is inviting us to engage in. And for me, it brings me back to what I think of as a cliche in many ways, but a core facet of what university is about is learning how to learn. And I think what AI is fantastic at the moment is synthesis of wide amount or large amounts of information. But I think that still we want to inculcate in our students the ability

ability to engage with those forms of information, whatever they are, books, you know, responses to prompts in AI-generated text, and actually to think critically about that kind of information. And I think it focuses us as institutions on inculcating those kinds of habits and practices, which I think are still going to be incredibly valuable going forward. I don't think that's going to disappear soon, I think.

Anything to add? I very much agree with the point that in many ways, knowing stuff maximises your ability to get the value of AI. The skill of knowing how to have a conversation with gentrify, knowing how to draft a prompt, knowing exactly how to do a search. All those, the more you know, the more you get out. And I think we're doing some thinking about this at Resolution Foundation. People...

I don't think AI will cause a net loss of jobs. The competitive threat is less from AI. It's more from people better trained than you at using AI. That's the competitive challenge. Interesting point. And I think this leads on actually to my next question, which is really the kind of...

I suppose universities have been the primary gatekeeper for professional careers. And I think that that is probably changing and being challenged. We're seeing a rise of professional certifications, micro-credentials, apprenticeships, online learning platforms, and so on. So what does...

What role does the university have in this, let's say, this new landscape where you can make a lot of the traditional things that we did as a university and now can be sorted and delivered elsewhere and by alternative means? So what is left for a university to do and what role does it play in this new landscape?

Who wants it? Aaron? I can go if you want. So I perhaps have a very, I mean, again, I'm unsurprisingly going, I mean, given that I'm paid by university, going to be like a bit of a boost. But one of the things that I really took through teaching through the pandemic period is that people really want to do stuff like what we're doing now, which is being together in a room.

hearing each other speak. In part, I think because the embodied presence of others demands something of us in terms of attention and focus. It requires us to take seriously that other person who might have ideas different from ourselves. And students were so eager, in my experience, to get back into classrooms with other students that I'm not convinced totally, actually, that these sort of digital transformations that make learning possible at school

a great distance, are going to kind of sweep aside the kind of institutional and architectural footprint of universities. And we have been here before a little bit with like MOOCs and podcasts and various, you know, these opportunities have been there. And I still think students are coming back. And there could be, you know, an ASU driving that. But I think there's something more about what it's like to be with other people learning together that I think is valuable.

I would certainly agree. I think Boris, you wanted to comment. Yeah, my ambition with Forward College was to design the most intense learning experience

and taking into account all these forms of intelligence and talents. And it's not a trade-off. It's not because you develop your social skills that you can't do math, because actually working in teams in math actually helps you, and your emotional skills, your resilience helps you also to learn. So to me it's more a multiplicative factor rather than a trade-off. And that is very important. I think when we ask our students, what do you like most at Forward College, it's the other students and the fellows.

And then the knowledge is here and it's part of the conversation, but the social dimension is extremely important. And there is also another element which is absolutely key in institutions like LSE. It's the symbolic belonging also to a community. When you get certifications, it's transactional. And I think what we provide in universities, private or public, private in my case,

is we provide a relation, we provide a sense of belonging, symbolic, real as well, and I think it makes a huge difference. And it's, again, not separating the learning from us being social beings.

One of the things that the digital revolution does in sector after sector is disintermediate, cut out the middleman. And the question is whether universities will be their function essentially of not just providing learning but credentializing will be disintermediated. And if you can complete a little bite-sized course

entirely electronically appraised and then that is accepted to get a job in the city or with any large employer

At that point, there is a real moment of danger for universities. In fact, as I say in my book, I'm slightly surprised in a way that the digital revolution, which has been underway for decades, has not led to more radical change in higher education than you might have expected. But there are ways in which universities can respond to disintermediation by themselves changing the

way in which you secure qualifications. So I do think ed tech could change things. And there is this wonderful image of the lecturer, Henry of Germany, lecturing to his students in mid-14th century Bologna, which is an image I think in a

a Berlin museum and if you look at that image from the mid 14th century there'll be people in this room in the last 24 hours who've had an education experience almost identical to that one from over 600 years ago and in some respects that's a good sign it shows that we're onto something but probably a bit more innovation in modes of delivery and forms of certification and then I think universities will stay in the game

I would agree to some extent with this block building that there is some importance in the fact that there is more flexibility in the system, the fact that you can now earn micro-credentials, certificates on top of say university education that also

also provide some kind of insurance if, for instance, you didn't enjoy all the experience of university or didn't get the returns to the degree that you wanted to get. So you can learn something on top of it and find some new career paths. So that's excellent. I don't think there is anything wrong about it. So the question is, what is the role of university in this changing world?

I think I agree with everyone else that community is important. Also, the participation, the communication that goes in the classroom is important. I think project-based learning is also something that's important to mention because that's probably what you get more in the university. You probably get some of it in some of the certificate-based learnings. But the ability to apply the skill, develop something new is, for now, the university is a bit more well-suited as it is.

maybe also the things will change. Thank you. Talking, I suppose, of the danger to universities, I know that other corporate challenges are more direct these days in terms of... I actually haven't heard about this, but Palantir, the multinational AI company,

valued at about $200 billion, recently launched a meritocracy fellowship in the US that explicitly tells high school graduates to skip the debt and indoctrination of college, offering them a pathway to work directly in industry instead.

So there is this kind of, again, and I think maybe it comes to all the discussions we're having about free speech and so on, but it's these claims that campuses have become breeding grounds for extremism. And how should universities respond? Is this a legitimate market signal about the future of universities?

Or is it really an attack on the social role, the broader social role that universities have historically played, even since the times of Bologna and so on? Anybody want to take that?

Yeah, my opinion would be that it's partially a sign of the growing polarization, right? And we know part of this polarization can be explained by differences between people who have university degrees and who don't, right? Who never went to university. And this level of polarization is growing, has all sorts of political consequences.

And we also know from all the other studies in political science that also people who get different degrees also have different opinions, public opinions. The question is how causal university education is, right? And there is some evidence to causality as well, right? So the content, our community in the university, different community, different subjects, also change...

contributes to changes in public opinion. Now, what is the role of university in light of all of that? And to balance, I don't know. It's a very difficult question to answer. But I think maybe there is some-- so given that the university is central-- so at least university education seems to be very important

growing level of polarization. Maybe universities also have a role to play in community engagement, in bringing in more people in university environment, maybe even by offering, say, evening courses, or just offering the facilities of university for use by the community in the same location. So just to bridge this divide between people who have university degrees or have been to universities.

and having this. Anybody else want to come in on this? Well, I mean, the program you're describing, this is the Peter Thiel stuff. And if you look at the tech entrepreneurs in the US, there's

Several of them went to university and dropped out quite early on. So they got some of the signalling benefits, at least. I got a place at Harvard. But then after a year, I moved on and started, you know, created companies and made lots of money. So taking that model and then saying to people, you don't need to go to university at all, is, I think, a misreading. And university values...

University courses have quirky ways of adding value into the tech entrepreneurs. I mean, for Steve Jobs, he says that the university course that he particularly studied was about design and script and text. The design of Apple is a benefit of a university education. I think in terms of other factors...

When you have a more polarised society, universities should be the place where young people go to learn how to disagree. And the moment of arriving at university is for many young people still the moment when you come across people from very different backgrounds, you escape the monoculture of your school, your family, your local environment. There are people from totally different environments. And if university says this is an opportunity for us

to learn how to disagree with people with very different backgrounds, I think that makes them even more important in today's environment. I certainly concur. Anybody else want to pitch in on this point before we move to the next question? I'll maybe just say very briefly that the question of indoctrination is complicated, I think, when it comes to universities. I think there is, as you mentioned, some evidence that universities have an impact on some of the values that people have.

But it's not incredibly strong, and I'm not convinced it comes from professors, at least, you know, I find it very difficult often to get my students to read and engage with lots of things. I think it's often probably actually the communities that students are living in as students that are having an impact on their worldview in much the way that Lord Willits is describing. And so I just think that's a very complicated sort of position to take vis-à-vis what are quite diverse heterogeneous institutions.

I guess it's a kind of a cheap headline though, isn't it? The next question is one that I think is kind of key to what we try to do here at LSE and that's around interdisciplinarity. So,

So I think if you do look at the major challenges that we are facing as a society, climate change, AI ethics, global health crises and so on, I think these challenges don't fit neatly into kind of disciplinary boxes or even to traditional academic departments. So how do you think a university, how should our university structures evolve or the way that we're teaching our pedagogies evolve to address those kind of complex interdisciplinary problems effectively?

Or should we even be, I suppose, is a broader question. Who wants to pitch in? Well, I mean, we were talking about this beforehand. There is a case for disciplines with a canonical body of knowledge, endlessly contested and changing, but some sense of the shape of a discipline, a capacity to assess one's mastery of the discipline,

I think it is an issue in universities that it would be great if people could study a wider range of disciplines for longer, which is where the English system is very unusual, both the early specialisation down to three A levels and the requirement that you specify in great detail exactly what you're going to study before you turn up at university, which is very different from other models. When applicants to American universities

are asked to specify the subject they wish to study, the most common answer is not yet decided. And then they go and they'll do some tasting of some various courses, especially in the first year. They'll probably then do a major and minor. And if I may say so, one of the advantages of that system is it drives upward pressures on the quality of teaching because the lecturers are competing for the students.

the pre-choice, pre-selection into a very specialised course eases the competitive pressures on academics to think how they're teaching and how they win student service. So I have to say I regard early specialisation as partly producer capture. And if you ask...

physicists, what you're looking for in someone you're recruiting to study physics, the short answer is lots of physics already, please. So our 18-year-olds who have an A level in physics, they're up to university to study physics, knowing more physics than any 18-year-old, just like in any other advanced Western country. The trouble is they don't necessarily have a very good sense of the shape of British or world history. So I do think the...

studying different disciplines and understanding the difference between them is more important than something called interdisciplinary, which can become a bit of a mush. Later on, when you're an academic, you wish to research, you have a mission, you want to bring it, fair enough. But working within several different disciplines is a fantastic education of training. Excellent. Anyone else want to... Bork, did you have a view on interdisciplinarity and the approach forward is taking? From my...

Not so much from Forward College, but more from my past as a consultant with universities. And being a source of friction again, I think the problem with interdisciplinarity is that it's very hard to make it happen. And I feel that the opportunity that we are having today is that I think everyone, including academics, get a sense that we are not in a business-as-usual context.

and that the original mission of universities to shape the future through the training and through knowledge creation is becoming critical and can make a difference in how our civilizations evolve. And I think going back to this narrative, to the root of this narrative, because I think the universities are a bit...

sometimes lost a bit their sense of purpose and sense of mission. And research has become also very much a bureaucratic activity to some extent. Not at LSE, obviously, but in many, you know, in France, all academics have to spend half of their time on research. And they are not able, all of them, to do good research, research that brings something to the world.

Thank you. Does anybody have quick comments on this? Because I might come to the last question given the kind of timing.

And this is about the future university graduate. Quite a big question, this one. So what should a university graduate in 2035 know, be able to do and embody that they couldn't gain elsewhere? I think if we were looking 10 years ahead. And do we need to transform? Do universities in general need to transform to deliver on this vision? Big question. Anybody want to pick this up?

I'll go, I'll go. Give it a go. So I think there is absolutely areas where universities will need to transform. I think it's also incredibly difficult to think about what will be the future of work

And so to me, if you're going to think about future proof in universities, it's actually kind of leaning into some of the things that we talked about before that universities already do quite well, which is, you know, invite students to come and learn from each other, to disagree with each other, to engage in practices of critical thinking, to be able to learn how to learn, as I mentioned before, because...

What's going to be essential is not necessarily being able to predict what the future of work look like, but actually give students the ability to engage with whatever that future of work will bring into their lives. And I think universities need to lean into some of those elements of their of their practice more than maybe focusing on specific forms of

of knowing or knowledge per se, that is obviously important. But I think it's more that we want students to be able to be flexible in how they approach the labour market. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think there is a very strong case for learning stuff, even if the stuff changes in the course of your working life and a lot of it becomes accessible online. Because in my experience, people, the key skills from higher education

learning how to think rigorously, learning how to spot strong evidence against weak evidence or misinformation. By and large, people don't learn those in the abstract. I always say to youngsters, if they ask me what they should study at university, I say, whatever interests you most, because you'll dig into it most deeply, and as you dig into it deeply, you will develop those other skills as a by-product of digging deeply into a body of stuff you wish to understand. So I think we...

And I think if we, in other words, it's a bit like the pursuit of happiness. By and large, happy lives are not ones which are dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. It should be a by-product of pursuing other worthwhile objectives. So similarly, I think these higher education intellectual skills we need are the by-product of digging deep into stuff you really want to understand.

Interesting. I mean, yes. I think it is indeed very difficult to find starting points that are stable here now. And I see two, but that's really a personal take. One is that we can be sure that in the best of case, successful humans in the future will have to be very good at leveraging machines, but will also have to be good at interacting with human beings.

So just taking that, I mean, it means a lot because it means are we good at helping our students interact with leverage machines, yes or no? And not only universities, also at school. And are we good at generating...

intense interactions. Is the lecture hall still up to date? And all of this stuff. So I think the way teaching happens, more social, also it happens on knowledge is important. The second starting point I see is about

Moving away from, you know, we are proud to be humans because we are smart, because we have machines that now may outsmart us. We are a species who is highly diverse. We are each individual a combination of our DNA and our history, and that has shaped us. And this unicity and our ability to express it is important, but we are also incredibly able to collaborate together.

as singular individuals. And that explains a lot of humanity's success in nature. And I think it says a lot, you know, going back to what you were saying, in how do you help students deepen their singularity, find it, make sense out of it, make a story, find their own narrative in a way, and that they understand what will make a difference

as individuals? What is their singularity? Because if you are replaceable by a machine, then if you try to imitate someone, you would be completely useless. So I think it's also an important starting point that we could use. Thank you.

Shemelia, do you want to come in? I just agree with all the points that have been raised. I think it's true that there is a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen. And we don't know what kind of skills will be needed in 2035. And there are other changes that are going on-- the growing polarization, the populism wave, the security threats. So a lot is going on. We don't know exactly what kind of skills will be needed. I think I agree with the point about communication specifically.

considering the growing polarization and considering the growing challenge to science that comes from certain parts of the population, it's important to have

First of all, research literacy, like we discussed, the general skills, ability to work with the data, but also the ability to communicate whatever is in the research to someone else. And that's where the communication skills, collaboration skills come in. And the universities probably need to get better at teaching this kind of skills. Thank you.

So I think I will stop the questions. There are some really fascinating, I think, responses. And I'm sure that we have questions. In fact, I see a hand up already. So I think it would be good to take questions if there are any specifically for Lord Willett. Perfect. And then we can we can kind of open up more broadly. Hi, I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome LSE podcast that we think you'd enjoy.

LSE IQ asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question, like why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Or can we afford the super rich? Come check us out. Just search for LSE IQ wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to the event.

Thank you all very much. Ewan Grant, UK Defence Forum. Heaven help us, I've taken away a huge amount of direct work, direct relevance. Thank you very, very much. My question is about is there any chance of making the universities as key players for those in later life, particularly mid-career and middle managers,

who didn't go and basically bring them back into the tent. Because I think there's some... Are these going to be recorded? I hope so, yes. Because they really do need passing on. Thank you very much.

Lord West, do you want to address that? And I do apologise, because I have to go for a meeting at 20 past. So, very briefly, I think you're absolutely right, sir. There is a role for universities there. And, look, this is one of my... You have hit on one of my regrets, one of my worst kind of policy mistakes. So what we did when we extended...

The loan scheme, fees and loans, the good news is that for 18-year-olds to fork in the road, understanding the repayment terms, they're not put off from applying to university by that scheme. The bad news is, I thought, by extending more loans as well for mature learners, that they would continue to do university courses. But for them, the loans do put them off.

If it's not a neat fork in the road of AD, you've got family responsibilities, you've got a job that you don't want to lose. You think that if you do this university course, it may mean that you get promotion or can change your career, but none of that is guaranteed. So it's all a bit more risky. There's a bit more financial risk and there's less upside certainty. And we do have some institutions that...

specialise in that type of adult education provision here in London, Birkbeck in particular, more widely the Open University. And whereas overall universities' finances improved as a result of the changes I brought in, for those institutions the situation got worse. And we should have had, I didn't try towards the end of it, we should have had some kind of core grant for adult learning provision.

And do you think the LLE will address that or not if it comes to this is a lifelong learning entitlement? Well, I think it has quite a serious problem, which is it's now the loan scheme. So it's an extending loan. And my view is, and I've said to the people involved in it over the years, I'm not at all convinced that as a loan scheme, I fear it will repeat exactly the same error as I made more than a decade ago.

very briefly before we come on i think that um certainly here at lse i think it it was part of our founding mission actually that kind of lifelong learning piece and i think it's something that we are starting to to rethink about how you can how you can bring that in possibly in more flexible ways that do then work around those that already have careers already have family responsibilities and caring responsibilities and i think flexibility will be key to the to the delivery of some of that

Sorry, Aaron. No, no, we should hear more from Lord Willett before he goes. In fact, I think Lord Willett's given that we're close to three parts. Maybe one question and we'll come to here and then you have one minute and then... My name is Bitsko. I'm a wannabe academic. I wonder if you could just comment on the reduction of the studying of the humanities in the Western world. Yeah, that's a big one. LAUGHTER

Yeah, there is a trend for the rise of STEM, which is at least as much driven by research priorities of governments, where the money goes at that level.

It is... And then we are in the interesting position in England that one of the best protections for the humanities as an academic discipline is the choices of 18-year-olds. And although... And there is some decline in foreign languages, for example, we have a serious problem. English is doing quite badly. History is not doing... Is doing quite well.

philosophy is doing quite well. So while there are still 18-year-olds who want to study those courses at university, there will then be academics teaching them, and that in some ways is a better... That's one of the ironies of that kind of pressure from student choice. I think at the moment it remains one of the most powerful bastions protecting the humanities and quite a contrast with the priorities and the allocation of research funding.

And I know you need to escape, so I think it would be nice for us to give a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I think, so we'll do, we have one question here and then I'll come over there. So there's a question. Universities are playing a prominent role, a very relevant role, to elaborate ideas and develop solutions for all the challenges of our areas.

and to create the leaders of the future. But the universities are also global communities, house, home of the inclusivity. So my question is how the new media, social media for example, can help universities to strengthen their role in the global community, especially because innovation

is becoming every day more relevant in education. Who would like to take this question? I'll take a punt at this. So I think there is a worry I would have actually about this, which is that

With universities, they could, I think, arbitrage their status, some of them, in order to try and offer more distance learning options for people around the world and to bring in the kind of intuition that I think you're gesturing towards.

My worry about this a bit is that what it might effectively do is sort of give people the sense of, or at least the kind of the symbol of an LSE degree, for example, without actually providing them the really essential part of that experience to some extent, which is being part of the community on campus.

And I worry that there could end up being a slightly extractive relationship there where people end up probably paying a premium for studying in a distance fashion at the LSE, but not really experiencing some of what we've described today. So I'm not...

ultimately opposed to any of those models. I'm open to thinking about how they work and whether they work, but I do think institutions like this should be cautious about doing that because I think there's perhaps a lot of money to be made, but also I worry about the benefits for students and I think we should be thoughtful about how we do that. I'm a traditionalist, me too, I'm about to live the life of the community. Anybody else have anything to add before we go to another question?

No? OK. So I think that we had a question over there. So I would like to ask a question about the point that you've talked about on the so-called indoctrination of the university. Because I think one of the major challenges for academia and intellectuals today is that there is this vacuum of a very appealing, more global narrative that used to be maybe neoliberalism or an urge for a globalized world and development, which is not

working quite well. And we do see that there are a lot of these very powerful people such as Peter Thiel and Alex Copland, they are using their resources to battle for this

this space in public narratives. So my question is what is the university's role in this? Should universities avoid politicizing their students? Should the university try their best to remain this so-called objective and neutral playground for different ideas? And how to, and what are some of the possibilities of balancing

balancing the need of students, the very real material needs for students to have a future professional success and encouraging students to find their opinions and their narratives in this increasingly politicizing world.

Gillian, do we have any online questions? I think when we... Who wants to take that question quickly, then we'll come to the online audience. Thank you for your question. It's for me again? I've talked way too much. Criticising the elite? I think...

is the role of university in getting students to think about politics. It's something political about many topics that we teach at university, right? And thinking about the politics of it and finding these opinions is extremely important. Yes, we do have evidence that people with university degrees have different opinions. Maybe university degrees themselves, the content of them or community in university have something to do with it. But I don't think that's

because the university discussions are being directed in a certain way, right? So that's absolutely not that. So, I mean, maybe, so I'm not sure what else universities can do except for, like, providing these places for students to discuss, to raise their opinion, for more equal discussion. Yeah, so I think that's it.

That would be my answer. Anything to add? Yeah, I think that's it. I think maybe we have one-- do we have one online question? And then before we close. So we had an LSE alumnus who joined us online for the session who asks, I'm an associate professor, and I see my students taking so many shortcuts using generative AI to avoid the work of learning. And indeed, in turn, they do not seem to care as much about their education, not having invested the time and work.

How can higher education support the development of a strong work ethic and foster curiosity in the AI era? Great question. Would you like to pick this up? Well, first I think we need to recognize that having these machines doing what you were supposed to do with a lot of effort and time in a few seconds and so easily is disconcerting and it's hugely demotivating for the youth.

I think we can understand that. And this is a very important challenge that we need to face. And going back to what you were saying about learning how to learn, we're not doing a great job at learning our students what it is to learn. And that making shortcuts doesn't help the learning.

you're shooting yourself in the foot in a way. So I'm looking at you but the alumnus is somewhere else. So I think we need to do a much better job at explaining how learning works, even from a brain perspective.

brain perspective, neuroscience perspective, how learning something in geology, as Lord Willits was saying, allows you to use it in different fields and make metaphors and gain a much more profound understanding of the world.

But if you don't explain that to students, that if you take a shortcut it doesn't pay off and you will not succeed at the exam, then obviously they will do it. They will always, and that's a human trait. I mean, and that's how we've developed all these technology of these conferences because we are lazy people. Lazy people, but I

I mean, just kind of, I think, before we close, I would say that all of the students that I have met here at LSE come to learn and have this incredible desire to learn and incredible curiosity. So I think that overall, I feel quite hopeful because every day I speak to students and they don't want to shortcut their learning. I think that they are keen to learn how to learn. So I think that...

I feel maybe more sanguine than, but then maybe I'm just naive, but I feel relatively sanguine about the human desire. We are continually inquisitive, and I think that we need to just promote that desire to learn. And I think on that note, I think I will finish, given that we're very close to half past. I do want to say thank you so much, first of all, to our speakers for their incredible insights and great discussion, which I hope you all enjoyed.

There are lots more exciting events coming up this week at the festival, so do take a copy of the programme on your way out if you haven't already, and do check out the programme which is online. And thank you so much once again for being such a great audience and providing great questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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