Politics Home noted this last night:
The head of the University and College Union, Jo Grady, has warned that universities face a financial calamity similar to the 2008 banking crisis, accusing the government of being “asleep at the wheel”.
Grady, who took over as the union's general secretary in 2019, is alarmed by the direction politics is taking in the UK, telling PoliticsHome that universities will be "in the firing line of Reform should they be elected”, and warning that leader Nigel Farage, whose party is leading in the polls, is laying the groundwork for attacking and closing institutions.
In response, Reform UK said that Grady was “absolutely right” that the party would “combat the educational institutions in this country that are poisoning the minds of our children”.
There are, of course, two elements to this comment, but they share the same root, which is that universities are currently treated as separate entities which can be picked off individually, as the microeconomic theory of the firm suggests, where it is assumed that the failure of one firm is an action independent of the consequences for all others.
This is not true. As Jo Grady points out, when ministers dictate visa policy, fee levels, funding structures, and even the ideological framing of higher education, the result is a system that looks autonomous on paper but is politically and financially dependent in reality, and in that sense, she is right to make a comparison with the banks before the 2008 crash.
Recent government-created pressure in the university sector, most especially driven by the desire to control migration when overseas students have been a massive earner of overseas income for the UK, has resulted in the immediate loss of 4,000 courses and 15,000 jobs in a year, and all the while the government continues to treat universities as if they were private firms expected to compete for revenue, rather than public institutions serving a social purpose.
The ideological, deeply neoliberal, incoherence in this is dangerous when the sector as a whole is at risk and, for the sake of the country, systemic decisions are required. It appears that ministers cannot think at that level. It also appears that they are happy for universities to be used in the petty ideological race-related disputes that now pass for politics in the UK.
This has not gone unnoticed by Reform, which is openly preparing to turn universities into its next culture-war battleground. Farage and his cohort describe universities as indoctrination camps and are promising to combat their influence using language chillingly reminiscent of the authoritarian playbook now being revived in the US under Trump and in fascist regimes of the past. As Grady rightly warns, attacks on education always begin when those in power fear the independence of critical minds.
The idea that universities can be left to self-govern while the government controls their income, their students, and, increasingly, their political narrative is a very obvious fiction. It is time this was recognised as such. But, more than that, if the university-based higher education system is to survive as a pillar of democracy rather than become another front in the war on truth, then what universities need is secure public funding and political respect for the freedom to think.
If Labour really believed in the importance of universities as places of learning, debate, development and democracy, they would offer that security. By hanging them out to dry, they are creating the basis for Farage to both attack them, and win by destroying their financial viability. Why, as ever, is Labour laying the path to fascism is the question to ask?
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Experience suggests that at least some institutions didnt ‘Make Social Capital while the Sun was Shining’
‘In response, Reform UK said that Grady was “absolutely right” that the party would “combat the educational institutions in this country that are poisoning the minds of our children”.’
In the same way that they frame improving workers rights as ‘red tape holding back industry’, Ref** are framing teaching students to question, be curious, think for themselves and so on as ‘poising the minds of our children’.
Craig
Labour are hanging the Universities out to dry because that is the British way.
You invest in and enlarge a sector by offering grants and investment up front, then when enough assets and debt has been created, you pull the rug out from underneath their feet helping a fire sale of assets to the private sector at knock down prices. And thus, the movement of wealth continues upwards.
British Governments – both Labour and Tory – work like this. A sure sign of our un-democracy.
Might the current Labour government be so rigorously narrow and detached in its thoughts, words and deeds for the following causes/reasons:
1) Lack of discussions resulting from the exclusion of those who have noncomformist view and questions?
2) A tyranny of theory and conformity?
3) More concern for backers than the whole of society?
4) Educations which lack breadth, depth and enquiring?
5) Excessive main stream media influence?
6) Insufficient listening and observation attitudes and skills?
7) Insufficient humility?
All those and more.
The Labour Party has lost its heart under Starmer.
I don’t know if it is possible to get it back.
I don’t think the party has lost its heart but the rather timid Starmer and his government are not listening to its heart.
I left the party after they issued some attack adverts against Rishi Sunak that were in *very* poor taste. It was obvious then that things at the top were not well.
Chilling. I’ve been listening to Robert Reich on the same subject. What an enormous change since the expansion of opportunity following WWII.
I think the reason Labour are appearing tough on universities (remember graduates form a bedrock of Labour support) is that Starmer is driven by Labour Together which is a front for (the appalling) ‘Blue Labour’. This is all you really need to know. Blue Labour is all about the nostalgic fantasy of the ‘traditional (white) working class’ which is always anti ‘woke’, and universities are ‘the woke factories’. In this sense Blue Labour should perhaps consider merging with Reform.
If Starmer and Labour want to have a second term (and at the very least stay ahead of Greens and Your Party in the polls) it would do well to increase support for universities and promote them as one of the UK’s leading sectors that is truly ‘world beating’!
(But they won’t do that, as anti left factionalism driven by McSweeney – see the book ‘The Fraud’ coming out soon – overrides all. McSweeney and Steve Reed’s mantra is really: ‘who cares about other things – let’s own the lefties’.)
It’s all very sad.
That is not very convincing to me.
The universities have taken on huge risks to achieve growth. Now the assets will be available to the private sector as the embarrassment of creating all that further education gets wasted on non-jobs. Now all of a sudden, apprenticeships are ‘in’. And this is long term policy? Supposedly.
It’s complete crap.
But think it through. You’ve got loads of money, and distressed assets for which you have taken no risk become available.
Government did this to the housing association (HA) sector in the 1980’s, 1990’s. Government said that it felt that councils gave a crap service, too large, not local enough etc., and favoured HA’s to deliver affordable housing.
So they offered up to 100% grant as a teaser rate and then sneakingly reduced the grant levels to HAs who had to keep developing. Result? HA s go the private banks for development funding. Then the banks become really interested in your business and your business is their loan repayments. Cue HA office closures, service retrenchment, wage cutting, lower funds for repairs and maintenance and selling off stock if its really bad.
In the Derbyshire market town I live in, there was a large scale ‘voluntary’ transfer of the council housing stock to a ‘local housing company’ – a HA like set up with the promise of a ‘local service’. Twenty years later, tenants contact there local landlord who resides in………… Birmingham!! And what did the district council do with the receipt of the sale? They put it toward a new swimming pool and fitness centre as part of recreation facilities in an area where young rural people are priced out of the housing market but hiring a weekend cottage is easy.
What a country.
Duncan, I’ve argued in previous comments to Richard’s blogs that something called ‘blue labour’ is an impossibility, not least because blue has always been, and still is, wholly associated with the Tories. Red – of various hues – is historically associated with Labour. Calling a faction of the Labour Party ‘blue’ is actually a rather pathetic joke, which I’m sure those who invented the label are well aware of. It’s simply admitting that the faction that now controls the Labour Party, and therefore the Starmer government, is Tory. Indeed, the current “Labour” government is in fact a direct follow on from Cameron’s and Osborne’s Tory government (without the Libs).
That said, you’re absolutely correct in all that you say about “blue” Labour’s supposed claims to be reclaiming, and now representing, the interests of the traditional Labour, working class, voter (i.e. white men). The problem with that is, that large numbers of white working class men never voted or aligned with Labour. If they had sales of the Daily Mirror (a Labour paper or was) would have been substantially more than those of The Sun, Daily Mail, and Daily Express all rabidly Tory. But they never were (note: at the pit I worked at in the late 1970s, early 1980s, the dominant papers were the three Tory papers I note above). In short, even the supposed ‘Labour’ supporters blue Labour claims as it’s historical underpinning is actually Tory.
If Harvard and Yale are under attack in the USA then sure as eggs eggs Labour slavishly follows and Reform even more so with Oxford and Cambridge top of the list.
This fixation on ‘immigrants’ is both idiotic as well as an indicator of underlying racism. The universities losing out on foreign students doesn’t just directly impact the universities in lost tuition fees but reduces the quality of a university education for home-grown students (meeting and getting to know others from different cultures), reduces the UK’s soft power but it also directly and indirectly negatively impacts growth (which even Rachel Reeves must be tired of saying – certainly I’m tired of hearing it when they do nothing to create it and seem to actively work against it).
We owe it to ourselves and, even more so, to future generations to maintain a strong – and ideally world-class – university system. From it will emerge the scientists, engineers, medics, innovators, philosophers, creatives, etc., that will positively contribute to our world and our societies.
Pulling out of Europe was a huge own goal. Making it unnecessarily difficult and/or unattractive to foreign students or not giving our home-grown students – particularly from working-class backgrounds – the opportunity to grow, develop and contribute positively will be another huge own goal.
Universities have changed a lot since my days at uni. Many are inspiring and focused on the overall university experience. Certainly I felt inspired and thought I’d like to go back to uni when I attended open days and offer holder days with my daughters. The one ‘slogan’ at an open day that stood out for me – and yet is undermined by government policies – was “World Changers Welcome” (courtesy of the University of Glasgow and “…aimed at recruiting students who want to make a positive impact on society, locally or globally. It reflects the university’s long history of innovation and its focus on collaborative, world-class research and teaching. The campaign includes a dedicated website showcasing “world-changing” alumni and students…”). For me, the foregoing sums up the madness of the current government approach.
I remember reading John Lanchester’s book about the 2008 crash, in which he claimed that there were 5 things where the UK was world class: finance, universities, the arts and engineering. I have forgotten the 5th one, maybe someone else can remember? I no longer have the book. Subsequent governments seem to have done their best to wreck everything except finance, an alien would think nothing else mattered. In spite of everything we still have 17 universities in the world top 100, (according to one of those daft polls). For how much longer one wonders?
I think it may have been hard science (theory, ibn other words). And you are right to speculate.
And the Arts are now just another branch of the American entertainment industry, and are running on fumes. There is nothing left that hasn’t been gutted to its very core by financialisation.
As I mentioning in a couple of comments last week, if you want to know EXACTLY what’s coming our way as far as the Reform agenda’s concerned simply look across the Atlantic. Reforms is 100% Trumpist. Indeed, they may as well take Project 2025 and update all references to the US and US institutions, laws, etc, etc, and swap them for UK equivalents.
So, there’s no mystery here about their plans for universities, which, as in Trumpist US, are seen as breeding grounds for wokeness, and liberal/progressive ideas – by “brainwashing” all those who attend. As anyone whose taught in a university in the UK over the past twenty or so years knows, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The curriculum in ALL universities is entirely driven by the neoliberal country/world in which we live. Period (as they say in the US). If you can nowadays still get ‘critical thinking’ into a university course you’re doing bloody well. and then add into that equation the impact AI is having on student’s willingness to actually do the reading/research necessary for assignments, etc, and there is no left wing bias.
What there is – thankfully – are many young people who do what millions of young people the world over do in their later teens and early twenties: develop physically and intellectually, into young adults, with their own beliefs, values, dreams, and so on. And unfortunately for those on the extreme right of politics, along the way many, many, young people still decide (despite all the pressure from social media and the like), that greed, selfishness, cruelty, ‘devil take the hindmost’, ethically vacuous morality is not for them.
I agree with you Ivan.
Reform is not thinking. It is just copying, in plain sight.
Another UK version of Trump action. There should be far more publicity about the influence of the Heritage Foundation and challenge about why we allow foreign(malign) money to influence our politics.
It’s not spoken about because people in power want the money and influence of the Heritage Foundation and other such organisations. I heard a great phrase today to describe these individuals: “Dignity Wraiths”, those who sell their reputation to gain access to, serve, and please those in power. Starmer and his cabinet, for example, or the lickspittals who surround Trump. And Farage, of course.