Students and staff pay the price for university funding crisis

‘Massive public investment in higher education – perhaps Britain’s last world-leading sector – is the only sustainable solution.’ Photograph: Mark Waugh/Alamy

For more than 15 years, university students and staff have borne the brunt of a broken system. Tuition fees helped turn higher education into a quasi-market, transforming students into indebted consumers and staff into precarious workers. Lord Mandelson’s support for Britain’s universities is welcome, but it is unfortunate that he appears relaxed about making students and staff pay the price – yet again – for patching up the sector’s finances (Universities are in a hole: linking student fees to inflation is the fairest way forward, 25 September).

Not only does Mandelson suggest students are penalised with tuition fee hikes, he takes aim at the student-staff ratio, suggesting it is much too low. This is hard to interpret as anything other than a call for job cuts, which Mandelson frames in the cynical phrase of the hour as “tough choices”.