British students lack ‘drive’ of their American peers, says Business Secretary
"Too often people go to university to explore research and knowledge," Business Secretary Peter Kyle told LBC
The Business Secretary has defended comments he made at a meeting with investors where he said British students lack the ‘drive’ and ‘vigour’ of their American peers.
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Speaking to investors at an event in London hosted by tech giant Nvidia, Peter Kyle said that while speaking to undergraduates at Stanford years ago, they all said they planned to use their degrees to go on and start a business.
“In Britain,” he said “if you went to a group of undergraduates, how big would that group have to be before you found someone that said their choice of going to university, and that choice of going to that specific university, was because they wanted to become a founder?
““The entrepreneurialism simply isn’t there – the drive, the vigour.”
Read more: Oxford and Cambridge pushed out of top three in UK university rankings for first time
Explaining his comments to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, Mr Kyle said: “I think in Britain, you’d have to get a pretty big group of undergraduates to say that the reason they chose that university - and university in itself - was to start a business.
“Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’.
“I want people to go to university… to start businesses in our country.”
His comments come as it emerged that Oxford and Cambridge universities have slipped out of the top three in prestigious university rankings for the first time ever.
The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026 ranked London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) first for the second year in a row, followed by the University of St Andrews in second place, and Durham University in third.
The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge were joint fourth, which marks the first time neither have held a place in the top three in the 32 years the guide has been running.
Last year Oxford was ranked third, and Cambridge had already been pushed to fourth. Both were pushed down last year when LSE moved up to first place from fourth, and St Andrews came second.
Helen Davies, editor of The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide, said: “In a very competitive top 10 Durham has climbed two places in a year, which is a significant achievement.
“In doing so it has outdone both Oxford and Cambridge, helping to push both of them out of the top three in our league table for the first time in the Good University Guide’s history.
“Its stellar academic performance was boosted this year by improvements in teaching quality and student experience.”