The Secret Lecturer

What Really Goes On at University – told by the insider who can’t give their real name

What if everything you think you know about British universities is wrong?

In The Secret Lecturer: What Really Goes on at University, an anonymous academic with fifteen years’ experience in UK higher education lifts the lid on life behind the campus branding, glossy prospectuses and “student experience” slogans. Structured as a sharply observed academic year, this candid diary shows the modern university as it really is: part corporation, part bureaucracy, part psychiatric ward – and still, somehow, a place where learning clings on.

From overcrowded, crumbling classrooms and outsourced mental-health support, to “Mickey Mouse degrees”, grade inflation and Vice-Chancellors on eye-watering salaries, The Secret Lecturer walks you through the lecture theatres, open-plan offices and leaking libraries where the future of higher education is being quietly hollowed out. Along the way, we meet adjuncts on precarious contracts, overworked support staff, anxious students crushed by debt, and senior managers obsessed with “impact”, league tables and arms-industry funding.

Both darkly funny and deadly serious, this book dissects:

• The marketised university – students as “customers”, the student-loan system, tuition fees, and the corporate mindset reshaping UK campuses.
• The culture wars, “woke” panics and free-speech rows – how media myths about snowflakes and safe spaces collide with very real racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia on campus.
• Mental health and burnout – the epidemic of anxiety and depression among students and staff, long waiting lists for support, and the emotional load dumped on front-line lecturers.
• Casualisation and exploitation – armies of hourly paid lecturers, bullying, harassment cases quietly settled, and departments shut down in the name of “efficiency”.
• Research, REF and reputation – impact scores, plagiarism scandals, dodgy partnerships, and the rise of the academic “brand”.

All of it is told with a dry, elegant wit and a clarity that cuts through the jargon of “innovation”, “excellence” and “Year Zero” timetables to reveal the human cost underneath.

This book is ideal for:

• Parents wanting to know what really lies behind the open day smiles, student satisfaction surveys and graduate-outcomes statistics.
• Prospective and current students trying to navigate tuition fees, student loans, debt, housing, mental-health pressures and the reality of online learning.
• Lecturers, teachers and university staff who will recognise every committee, audit, restructure and “strategic vision” – and finally see it captured on the page.
• Readers of campus satire, dark academia and political non-fictionwho enjoy books that are sharply observed, politically aware and very readable.

Buy the paperback now and step inside the modern university – before the next restructure shuts it down.

Reviews

'Beyond the often amusing accounts of interactions with difficult people, there are also numerous moments where the author offers a glimpse into what reads as more systemic issues such as grade inflation and student cheating, the struggle for research time, casual instances of prejudice... an engaging read.' Debbie McVitty, Editor, WONKHE

'The Secret Lecturer conveys a dry, ironic and often self-deprecating humour and considerable humanity, particularly through consideration of mental health, sexism and racism.' Linda Hill, Linda's Book Bag

Extract

The UK public seems to think a university lecturer is an idle, sherry-swigging stereotype out of a 1970s campus novel. Perceptions of students are frozen in the 1980s – they’re either idle, undernourished wimps à la Neil from the BBC sitcom The Young Ones or like his housemates Rick (naïvely militant blowhard) or Vyvyan (shouty, intoxicated hooligan).

Many of the students I teach are well-behaved, eat healthily and aren’t uniformly obsessed with getting smashed. Some of them even vote Conservative. But an even more disturbing development that few in the ’80s could have predicted is the epidemic of mental illness among students – and staff. Readers may be surprised to find out that legions of lecturers are overworked and underpaid, and on casual contracts.

As you will also see, academic standards are slowly being obliterated, though that has more to do with financing than with a slide into ‘wokery.’ The conversion of students into customers we can’t afford to upset has resulted in an upsurge in grades, non-attendance, abusive behaviour and plagiarism.

Hardly anyone ever fails, no matter how badly they perform. Not to be left out, lecturers can plagiarise, too – usually each other’s lecture notes and research ideas. A mania about external funding has destroyed research ethics.

Buy the book and start reading