Laura Spence Affair - After The Row

After The Row

The Laura Spence Affair recurred in the headlines in the UK throughout the summer of 2000 (both before and after Brown's speech), and is arguably one of the major events that pushed "widening participation" in Higher Education into the political spotlight in the United Kingdom. It also caused a party political row over a select committee report on higher education.

Spence completed her studies at Harvard in 2004, and planned to return to the UK to pursue a medical career. She also encouraged more British students to study in the US, citing the "broader, more balanced curriculum" of a liberal arts education and the availability of scholarships and need-based-financial aid to assist with fees that may seem "astronomically prohibitive". It was later reported that she was studying medicine at the University of Cambridge.

In 2007 The Sunday Times revisited the affair, comprehensively reviewing the political statements at the time set against the facts of the case, and subsequent political and educational fall-out. It was highly critical of Gordon Brown's "spectacular own goal".

On Saturday 25 October 2008, Spence graduated from Wolfson College, Cambridge with a degree in Medicine. Cambridge said she graduated from her medicine course with distinction.