Subsidized access to appreciating public assets in rapidly growing economies can serve as a powerful instrument for intergenerational redistribution, from Kaiji Chen, @HanmingF, and Yang Tang nber.org/papers/w35754

The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale (in that order). Cambridge, the university of Newton, Hawking, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, Keynes, Crick, Sanger, Kendrew, Perutz, Rutherford, Chadwick, Turing, Maxwell, Brenner, the list goes on and on, Cambridge is beyond question one of the very greatest universities in the world. The list of immense distinction continues to the present day. It is tragic, and deeply unfair, that the reputation of this truly great university should suffer at the hands one unfortunate anomaly, the Department of Education.

I strongly believe that knowledge is fundamental to running a society. We need economists who understand monetary policy in central banks. We need researchers who have studied history, strategy, and military affairs to help steer national defense. We need doctors and public health experts to design effective responses to epidemics. But the public needs sound reasons to let these experts shape their future. Once that trust evaporates, we are all worse off. Unfortunately, the Jason Arday scandal is the perfect example of how these experts, and the institutions they run, are destroying that trust. I do not find Arday’s tales extraordinary. Throughout history, there are thousands of examples of people spinning fantastic tales about their lives. He is just one more name on a long list of confidence men. What is extraordinary is the massive institutional failure at every level. Liverpool John Moores University granting a degree for a Ph.D. dissertation that did not survive even basic scrutiny (including a grammatical mistake in its title). Cambridge University appointing him (full) professor at an unusually early academic age (eight years after his dissertation; in academia, this is what matters, not your biological age) and with a scholarly record that was rather thin. Hilary Cremin (@hilarycremin), head of the Faculty of Education, telling the world on television that Arday was “the best in the world in terms of the research that you do.” The BBC broadcasting segments about Arday, a most unusual decision for an academic appointment. Simon & Schuster paying him a large advance for his memoirs on the basis of a book proposal that defied common sense. And Amazon promoting his book, still this very morning, as an editor’s pick. If I were a regular person, say someone driving a truck in the Midlands or working at a small shop in Sussex, how could I trust the universities any longer? How could I trust the BBC and the media? How could I trust the publishing industry? How could I trust Amazon’s editor’s picks? Then, should we be surprised if the farmer or the shop owner votes for someone selling snake oil? Or if they refuse to listen to the case for policies that cost them in the short run but benefit them in the long run, such as the transition to net zero emissions? Or if they read books written by charlatans? Or if they deny basic scientific findings? The universities, the media, the publishing industry, Amazon, and many of our other core knowledge institutions have a serious problem. Their response is to close ranks and avoid a serious discussion. No, sorry, this will not do. The Jason Arday scandal should be a moment of reckoning. Unfortunately, I am afraid it will not be.