A key turning point in British politics was Tony Blair’s famous three priorities: “education, education, education”. A giant step was his 1999 conference speech: “Today I set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century.” By 2017-18 that symbolic threshold had been crossed in England, with more than half of young people taking that leap forward. In 1980 it was just 15%.
But universities are falling into severe financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, the Tories are not unduly bothered. They attack universities all the time, calling for cuts in student numbers. Now they are plunging the knife into vital funding from foreign students. They ignore pleas from major companies, which wrote to the government this week, to stop a migration policy that is threatening investment in the UK by blocking foreign students.
