Failing by degrees

AFTER indulging their ‘ snowflake’ students’ demands for ‘ safe space’ censorship, banning speakers who might cause the slightest offence and obsessing about ethnic and working class quotas, it’s no surprise that British universities are slipping down the global league table.

With all their posturing and political correctness, they seem to be forgetting the most important requirements of a topclass university: recruiting the best students, regardless of background, instilling them with intellectual rigour – and teaching them to have an open mind. AS

THE bible of America’s chattering classes, The New York Times is constantly boasting of its journalistic integrity. Indeed its staff handbook reminds reporters its goal ‘is to cover the news as impartially as possible – without fear or favour’. Yet this week the paper published a patently biased and error-strewn piece telling how a Merseyside town was brought to its knees by ‘Tory cuts’. Surely a paper of such enormous integrity will now print a correction and apology.