Given Britain’s stagnant economy, dilapidated public services and near-bankrupt local authorities, there isn’t much public concern left over for its universities. But 14 years of Tory rule have damaged them just as grievously as the rest of the public realm, and in some ways more recklessly.
As many academics have warned, the funding system of higher education is heading towards disaster. One reason why this story has struggled to gain traction is that, as with so many areas of Britain’s highly unequal society, the elite end of the spectrum continues to thrive: according to the recent QS world university rankings, four of the world’s top 10 universities are in Britain.
But the news from the rest of the sector is increasingly grim. Revenue has struggled to keep up with spiralling costs, even while academic salaries have been falling in real terms. A sense of emergency took hold last autumn, when it became clear that there had been a sharp drop in international students, whose higher fees have become pivotal to the funding model of higher education in the UK. Cue panic, as universities scrambled to bring in whatever students they could, slashing entry tariffs for postgraduates and even poaching them from one another, sometimes midterm.
