It is a year since Sir Keir Starmer said that “crumbling” universities were in a worse state than Labour realised before the election. But having failed to come up with a meaningful plan to fix them, ministers now risk further harm. Changes to visa rules and a new levy on international student fees threaten to undermine the sector – with alarming knock-on effects in places where universities play an especially important economic and cultural role.
This is the main theme of a new report from the Centre for Cities. It points to towns and cities, mostly outside the south-east and including Plymouth and Hull, where universities have an outsize role in economic activity. In places such as Exeter and Dundee (where the university recently received a £40m bailout from the Scottish government), international student fees make universities the biggest exporters of services. The message to ministers is to pay attention to such connections. Economic growth and higher education policies need to be joined up.
