Is this the end of the university as we know it?

There was a time when freshers' week at university was about drinking, dancing and making new friends. This year, it increasingly resembles an induction course into a seminary or a convent. Forget about social experimentation or discovering who you are or who you want to be, freshers' week now serves as a laboratory for social engineering.

As I write, I discover that King’s College London is hosting an "Exploring Emotional Intelligence" workshop for the aspirant emotionally correct student. For those who want something a bit stronger, freshers arriving at Oxford this week will be made to attend a controversial "consent class", which teaches students not to sexually assault others. The same courses will be reportedly run at Cambridge on an opt-out basis. Add to this the bewildering variety of the other workshops on sexuality, alcohol consumption, drugs, racism, misogyny and religious intolerance being run at other universities up and down the country, and you are left asking why aren’t undergraduates being trusted to work things out for themselves any more?