Can academics change their students’ personalities?

Just for the record: when I "praised Nicky Morgan", I said that "I find myself in the rare position of agreeing with her on this issue". More generally, character education is not an antidote to social advantage and Bridge Group Director Nik Miller is absolutely right when he says that students from advantaged backgrounds access the opportunities to develop character education more than those for whom getting into HE in the first place represented more of a social and financial struggle. Universities however are an excellent place to encourage ALL students to take up those opportunities and create incentives within the curriculum for them to do so. This is not about expect academics to "teach" character. As John Holman says, that's not how it works. But we can look for ways to ensure that our teaching taps into the positive reinforcement of positive behaviours. Few universities even consider the issue, but – as with raising soft skills and other non-academic areas of employability – we could do a lot more to develop social capital by thinking not just about what we teach, but how we teach – and also how students learn and how they engage with their whole student experience.