Bad Education

Wow, how refreshing, an academic who has the courage to cry ‘the Academic Emperor’s got not clothes on’. Using his own ‘lived experience’ as a professor, Matt Goodwin pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of institutional rot at the heart of UK universities. This is not motivated by a destructive nihilism but a love for the ideals of open inquiry, the pursuit of knowledge and academic freedom. And how these values can be restored. It is driven by a genuine affection for all those young, idealistic students who arrive on campus full of intellectual curiosity and ambitions to learn and are routinely betrayed & remodelled by contemporary fads for everything from EDI to Critical Race Theory. Hurrah for a dose of truth.

Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley, Director of the Academy of Ideas

Matt Goodwin's critique of today's universities is fierce, but it is well buttressed by empirical data. Anyone who cares about these culturally and politically crucial institutions should take careful heed of what he has to say.

Nigel Biggar, CBE, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology, University of Oxford, and Chair of The Free Speech Union

‘More than anything else, argues Matthew Goodwin, the cultural left sympathies of staff, students and bureaucrats are killing the golden goose of higher education in the West. Intolerant activists and administrators control the parameters of debate and cancel dissenters while subtler currents of political discrimination induce self-censorship and progressive conformity, strangling political diversity. Only democratic intervention from outside the university can save a noble institution that has been at the centre of western civilisation. Deeply personal and impeccably researched, Bad Education seamlessly blends ‘lived experience’, human tragedies and generalisable data into a rich, tight, fast-paced read.’

Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, University of Buckingham

Buy this book. You could save yourself, your parents or children a lot of money.

Douglas Murray, bestselling author of The War on the West and The Madness of Crowds

If you want to know how our universities became woke madrassas, this is the book to read. But it isn’t just a litany of complaints. Matt Goodwin also has a concrete plan for turning them back into universities again. Essential reading for anyone who’s been wondering how Britain’s once great higher education sector became a dumpster fire.

Toby Young, director of The Free Speech Union, associate editor of The Spectator

Our universities increasingly resemble the pre-reformation Catholic Church, with academics as the new clerisy. They demand our submission to a corrupted faith and control access to the good life. But in Matthew Goodwin they have met their Martin Luther who has resigned from the church and, in this book, publishes his excoriating contemporary 95 Theses. An urgent call for reformation.

David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere

Worry about the oppressive culture of our universities has been growing for several years and has even led to occasional media attention when a prominent person is cancelled or an academic is forced to resign or is even sacked. Many, not least in academia, have averted their gaze, or only spoken of their fears in hushed tones. Matthew Goodwin is different: he shouts from the rooftops. This book should shake the complacency of all who dismiss fears about intellectual freedom as an artificial 'moral panic', especially politicians who have blocked legislation to protect free speech.

Robert Tombs, Professor of Modern European History, University of Cambridge

If politics is downstream from culture, then culture is downstream from the campus. Goodwin's searing new book exposes the tragic transformation of our university system into little more than a sanitised, multi-billion-pound enterprise of monocultural managerialism. His brave and urgent critique lays bare the tragic corruption of young minds and offers a roadmap to reclaim true academic freedom, pluralism, and the radical pursuit of truth. Let us heed his call before it’s too late, and work to restore our universities as places of genuine intellectual diversity. For parents and future students, this book is essential reading—an eye-opening guide to understanding what’s at stake for the next generation and why we must act now.

Doug Stokes, Director of the Strategy and Security Institute, University of Exeter

Matt Goodwin has pulled back the curtain to show how Britain’s universities have been captured by an illiberal ideology that has no serious interest in the traditional virtues of academic life. If you are interested in defending free speech and academic freedom on campus then you have to read this book!

Peter Boghossian, author of How to Have Impossible Conversations and Founding Faculty Fellow, University of Austin

A forceful rebuttal of everything that has gone wrong with our education system. Matt Goodwin will not surrender our august cultural heritage to imbeciles, cowardly conformists, and lunatics. ‘Culture war’ is often cited dismissively. Sorry, this is war, period, and the side with both humility and self-respect is destined to win.

Lionel Shriver

Goodwin’s manifesto-cum-memoir, Bad Education, takes aim at the ills of higher education. His powerful and persuasive, if exhausting, case will persuade you that our universities have a problem.

The Times

Excoriating. Pacey, personal and polemical.

HEPI (Higher Education Policy Institute)