Yuchen Yang, PhD

When I was doing my PhD at Chicago, I never thought one day I would need to write a 1,300-word email explaining to a senior colleague in the UK why it is pedagogically irresponsible to let students cite whatever sources they want for their final assignment. But the harsh reality of British-style bureaucracy quickly slapped me in my face. In September 2026, I updated an “assessment brief” (a bureaucratic document unique to the UK that lays out how students in a class will be assessed, which must be submitted to and approved by a so-called “assessment scrutiny panel” before the teaching term begins) for my class and specified that students can only use the required and recommended readings on the syllabus to answer the final essay question. Much to my chagrin, the so-called “assessment scrutiny panel” pushed back, saying that “This is out of step with all of the other modules across our programmes, the independent literacy skills we teach [sic], and the marking criteria.”

To be honest, my first reaction was simply, “You must be duping yourself to believe our 1^st and 2^nd year students are actually reading Butler’s Gender Trouble in addition to dozens of other books and articles over Christmas, when an increasing number of them don’t even do the required readings during the teaching term!” But as a sociologist, I quickly realized that the panel’s knee-jerk reaction to such a standard practice in many QS Top-50 Sociology Departments is not only a reflection of a neoliberal education ideology but also symptomatic of a bigger problem with the gigantic bureaucracy of the British Higher Education Sector. During my time in the UK, I’ve repeatedly observed how seemingly objective-sounding phrases like “quality assurance,” “internal scrutiny,” “external examination” were mobilized to maintain the status quo and subjugate pedagogical innovation by junior scholars that could have helped to put out the dumpster fire of British HE.

To be sure, high-quality education is but one thing hampered by the obsession with bureaucratic red tape. This memeification project is a satire that hopes to remind my fellow British colleagues that a different (and better) education system is possible.