Forget Classics, these students are studying to save the world

These words seem to imply a criticism of what goes on in other universities – the ones where students take courses that will allegedly be of limited use in the outside world, the contents of which they will soon have forgotten anyway. Wouldn’t many academics, especially in the arts and humanities, argue that the point of higher education is critical thinking, and – whisper it – the now-unfashionable pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake?

Gombrich has heard these arguments before. ‘But critical thinking has to go with real-world application. Particularly in the age of AI. You have to be deeply critical about what you’re being presented [with].’ What we need is better critical thinkers engaging with ‘real-world statistics and political manifestos,’ he argues. ‘As for education for education’s sake, who could deny that’s a lovely thing, and if you want to sequester yourself away for three years to do medieval French history, go for your life. Fine. But there’s no way that should be the norm.’

At a time when almost 36 per cent of 18-year-olds in England are entering full-time higher education, at an annual cost of more than £9,000 for fees alone (the same fees that are paid by LIS students), the debate is admittedly worth having.

LIS’s offering has precedents too, in the old polytechnic institutions, and the new universities of the 1960s, with their liberal arts courses combining humanities and sciences. But according to Gombrich’s diagnosis, our education system is not set up to encourage this kind of learning, and these programmes were ultimately hampered by Britain’s narrow A-level programme. ‘Students weren’t exposed to different sorts of knowledge and so didn’t see the value in that,’ he says. British academia itself was meanwhile too siloed to lend itself to an interdisciplinary approach, he suggests.

Times have changed and now there’s even more of an imperative to rethink the way we learn, he argues, citing the internet and globalisation as major reasons: ‘These are forcing people to think in more connected, broad ways. But it’s very hard to change a system once you’ve got self-affirming feedback loops, which just perpetuate the current system.’

We have one of the narrowest education systems for 16- to 18-year-olds in the world, he stresses. ‘And I just don’t see why British exceptionalism applies here. Either we think [UK pupils] are too dumb to do any wider subjects, or we think there’s something uniquely important about just doing history, classics and English at A-level – when a Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Indian or American kid will be doing five, six or seven subjects typically across all the sciences, all the humanities and the social sciences.’

Clearly there’s a lot at stake: all those complex real-world problems to solve, from climate change and migration to AI and ethics. ‘You cannot do it from a single disciplinary perspective,’ says Gombrich firmly.

His students are equally clear-eyed about the challenges their generation will face.

Climate change and sustainable development are cited; also social media companies’ almost unfettered access to our human experience and data; inequality in wealth, education, housing, food; echo chambers and a dearth of empathy across different groups.