Bad Education

Author Matt Goodwin
Narrator Matt Goodwin
Publisher Transworld
Publish Date 6 February 2025
Run Time 4 hours and 56 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, Biography: general, Moral and social purpose of education, Social and political philosophy, Social, group or collective psychology, Society and Social Sciences, Teaching staff.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NATIONAL POPULISM AND VALUES, VOICE AND VIRTUE.

Depressed tutors and disillusioned students. Cheating parents, funding crises and faculty misconduct. Culture wars and campus protests. Welcome to the broken world of academia. Welcome to Bad Education.

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Our universities are broken. Established as sanctuaries of truth and higher learning, they are now decaying institutions that are failing a generation of young people. Consumed by funding and admissions crises, dominated by dogma and governed by self-interest, their founding principles have been corrupted. This explosive book shows us why, and what we must do to fix them.

Matt Goodwin spent decades working as an academic in some of the world’s leading universities, delivering underfunded courses to increasingly disengaged lecture theatres, sitting on rudderless committees, counselling depressed colleagues and concerned students, watching standards slip and academic integrity decline.

At the heart of this crisis is an increasingly politicised campus. Once bastions of free speech, forums for open debate and incubators of bold new ideas, our universities are increasingly becoming monocultures, ruled by an ideology that is silencing respected voices, stifling discussion and violently shutting down diverse opinion, betraying intellectual freedom.

Unflinching, shocking and urgent, this first-hand account provides an insider's view of how the founding principles of academia are in decline and why we should all consider what this means for the students of today, tomorrow and the world they will shape.

© Matt Goodwin 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

A distressing tale of failure to stand up for the principles of academic excellence and courage

The Spectator

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

Douglas Murray, bestselling author ofu00a0Theu00a0War on the Westu00a0andu00a0The Madness of Crowds

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

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

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

'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

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

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

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