Speaking of Universities

by Stefan Collini

pointing to the damage likely to be done to universities by the proposed applications of business-school models of ‘competing producers’ and ‘demanding consumers’ does not rest on any nostalgic desire to return to the far smaller and more selective higher education system of three or four decades ago. The expansion of the proportion of the age-cohort entering higher education from 6 per cent to 44 per cent is a great democratic gain that this society should not wish to retreat from. Quite to the contrary, we should be seeking to ensure that those now entering universities in still-increasing numbers are not cheated of their legitimate entitlement to an education – not palmed off, in the name of ‘meeting the needs of employers’, with a narrow training that is thought by right-wing policy-formers and Home Counties dinner-party wisdom to be ‘good enough for the likes of them’, while the children of the privileged classes largely get to attend properly resourced universities that can continue to boast of their standing in global league tables. There is nothing fanciful or irresponsible in believing that this great public good of expanded education can and should be largely publicly funded.