Students fear losing marks if an essay is pro-Brexit

‘Genuine culture of contempt’

UNIVERSITY students have revealed they avoid writing pro-Brexit essays because they fear being marked down.

Some fear that debate on the issue is being ‘shut down’ by pro-Remain lecturers.

Last night, universities minister Jo Johnson said universities had a duty to ‘open minds’ and allow proper debates on controversial topics.

But Jamie Hollywood, a philosophy, politics and economics student at Goldsmiths, University of London, told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘I’ve experienced incredible Brexit bias. In my first lecture in philosophy, the lecturer, who is European, told the class that Brexit was a nationalist enterprise.’

A law and politics graduate at Cardiff University said: ‘There was a genuine culture of contempt in our faculty for Brexit.’

It is understood the new Office for Students, a regulator with powers to strip universities of their degree-awarding status, will be monitoring the issue.

A Goldsmiths spokesman said the lecturer mentioned had been trying to ‘stimulate discussion’ and was not involved in marking assignments.

A Cardiff spokesman said it had been unaware of the allegations, adding it encouraged students to report concerns.