A Cultural Engine Research Group Event – Is Toby Young, former non-executive director at the Office for Students, right to denigrate (modern) university provision when he states, ‘why spend three years doing media studies at a second-rate university when you could find a better-paid job after getting a qualification in a skilled occupation at a further education college – and without a debt of £50,000?’

Or should we extend the novelist David Lodge’s defence of pre-92 universities – ‘cathedrals of the modern age [that] shouldn’t have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria’ – to all institutions, enabling economically deprived students over-represented at ‘second-rate’ ones the opportunity to value education for its own sake?

Join the debate at Conway Hall in London from 7pm. Speakers include Tom Owolade (Writer/Author New Statesman and Unherd), Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert (Director of ‘Don’t Divide Us’), Dr Tania Phipps-Rufus (Research & Innovation Lead University of East London), Dr Tony Sampson (Reader in Digital Communications at University of Essex), Carl Hayden-Smith (Associate Professor Media University of East London). Chaired by Dr Andrew Branch (University of East London)

Conway Hall – 25 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4RL