The brief launch of an app promising to attend students’ lectures as well as write their assignments caused some academics to despair at a dystopian near-future in which learning becomes a pointless sham. But others believe the abyss can be bypassed. Juliette Rowsell reports

A wave of dismay about student loans has flooded the UK media recently, with graduates complaining that ever-rising debt levels are threatening to capsize their personal finances. How could or should the government bail them out? We ask the experts: Philip Augar, Kate Ogden and Nicholas Barr