Lenin would approve

As one of the 24 members of the Russell Group, Cardiff University is among Britain’s finest, whatever this distinction means these days.

That’s why it’s telling that its vice-chancellor, Wendy Larner, is about to swing an axe, citing a black hole in funding. Over 400 academic jobs will be cut, mostly in modern languages, ancient history, music, religion, theology and nursing.

With the exception of nursing, which really belongs in a medical school, these subjects should be the mainstays in the curriculum of any university worthy of the name, never mind one of Britain’s finest.

“I know that these proposals impact some staff more than others and they will cause a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety for those potentially impacted,” said Prof Larner, whose own syntax suggests an urgent need for a remedial English course.

Then again, she is a sociologist whose alliterative field is ‘globalisation, governance and gender’. One can impact an impact in that discipline by speaking in impactful bureaucratese only. In fact, that must be a job requirement.

You’ll be relieved to know that the vice-chancellor hasn’t announced any cuts in either her administrative and DEI staff or in her own annual £290,000 salary. Nor do I think she will: such things must be held sacred.

Some people may wonder why the university’s non-academic staff of 3,660 outnumbers its 3,419 dons. Yet every one of those admin jobs is much more vital: there are forms to fill by the tonne, and it takes a large labour force to make sure diverse people are equitably included.

Such is the zeitgeist: any public institution functioning according to modern principles, be it an NHS hospital, a major charity or a university, is increasingly dedicated to activities extraneous to its mission. The ideal for which they strive is hospitals getting rid of doctors and nurses, charities of their ultimate recipients, and universities of academics. Such people only get in the way of the higher purpose pursued by such outfits.

At universities, it’s the humanities that bear the brunt of redundancies. We don’t need historians, linguists, musicologists or theologians. We need DEI enforcers.

This again compels me to recall my youth misspent in the Soviet Union, so here comes another sleepless night of cold sweats. There, in 1919, Lenin ordered the execution of the few grand dukes still alive after the spate of 1918 murders.

One of those nobles, Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich, was an historian renowned well beyond Russia’s borders. The Enlightenment Commissar Lunacharsky, who leavened his bloodthirstiness with smatterings of cultural pretensions, cited that fact when asking Lenin to commute the sentence.

Comrade Lenin’s reply laid out the blueprint that evidently still inspires our universities. “The revolution,” he said, “doesn’t need historians”. That uppercut of a response carried the day, and Nikolai Mikhailovich followed his relations into an unmarked grave.

Lenin’s adage can work the other way too: no need for historians betokens a revolution under way. As part of it, British universities are going the way of their Soviet counterparts.

Rather than elevating students’ minds, they combine the functions of brainwashing laundries and trade schools. This academic debauchment is so far expressed in a less sanguinary fashion than it was in Russia circa 1919, but the effect is similar.

Cardiff blamed the state of its finances on “declining international student applications”, and one wonders why Chinese and Indian youngsters, the principal groups of foreign students in Britain, are shunning Cardiff University. Could it be because they are more interested in real knowledge than in gender studies and DEI?

Cardiff doesn’t hold exclusive rights to this nonsense. Other Russell Group universities are following the same path at the same speed if half a step behind.

Durham University is slashing 200 academic jobs and Newcastle University is adding 300 to the unemployment rolls. Some 72 per cent of English universities are getting into the red, and more than half of all UK universities are laying off academics or cutting courses.

You get no prizes for guessing which courses they are cutting. Gender studies? Women’s studies? Black studies? Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, the government is raising tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535, but that’s unlikely to plug the hole made by foreign students voting with their feet. That increase will be a drop in the bucket, considering that universities are currently making a loss of about £2,500 for each domestic student.

However, when Labour charges more for anything, be it taxes, duties or education, the purpose is usually not fiscal but punitive. Britain under their stewardship is the only Western country imposing VAT on school fees, which, with thousands of pupils having to migrate to overcrowded state schools, has a negative net effect on state revenue. But at least the middle classes are taught who’s boss, so they don’t get ideas above, or even at, their station.

That’s Leninism in action, if so far without attendant violence. The social pyramid has to be truncated, with another top put in its place. Statesmen, nobles, haute bourgeoisie and scholars have fallen by the wayside, with socialist apparatchiks taking their place.

Socialism doesn’t eliminate social hierarchies; it just puts at the top those who barely qualify to be even at the bottom.

The damage this does in academe is the most devastating for being the most enduring. We can just about survive a few years of inept government staffed with jumped-up nomenklatura. But I’m not sure we can ever recover from the knock-on effect of universities run by experts in ‘globalisation, governance and gender’.

The degrees they dole out are increasingly worthless, and people are beginning to realise this. That has to be the greatest part of the financial difficulties experienced by even our top universities — and of the social disaster lurking just round the corner.

Now, if at all possible, one should never pan without proposing, so goes the imperative British wisdom. Alas, doing something about the quality of our higher education would involve sweeping long-term changes to the whole modern ethos.

I don’t know how that can be accomplished without a revolutionary upheaval, and I detest revolutionary upheavals. However, I can offer an instant solution to the funding problems of our universities.

Do a Trump on them: sack at least 80 per cent of the administrative staff and eliminate DEI departments altogether. And oh, by the way, that same approach would also do wonders for public finances in all other areas too.

As for Cardiff University specifically, I’d suggest it start by getting rid of the vice-chancellor. She isn’t up to the job.