Rightly rejecting the idea of lifting the cap on tuition fees in English universities, the higher education minister, Robert Halfon, last week urged the HE sector to read the signs of the times. “I just think we have to be real,” said Mr Halfon, “that we have to live in the world as it is, which is an incredibly difficult one faced by cost-of-living challenges.”
He was responding to increasingly loud warnings from vice-chancellors that a university funding crisis is becoming acute. Given the mounting level of debt already being taken on by less well-off students, it would indeed be wrong to pile yet more financial pressure on them. But when it comes to addressing the wider context of festering discontent on England’s campuses, it is Mr Halfon and the Conservative architects of a failing system who need to get real.
This summer, thousands of unhappy graduates emerged from Covid-blighted degree courses with blank certificates, their work ungraded due to a marking boycott by lecturers. Some vented their frustration publicly during graduation ceremonies.
The bitter industrial dispute between academics and their employers – which has now lasted five years – is not over. Next week, the University and College Union will hold an emergency meeting to decide whether to ballot over further strike action in the autumn. Having suffered substantial real terms pay cuts for 13 years, lecturers are demanding a double-digit pay rise. The casualisation of teaching contracts for younger academics has also contributed to unprecedented levels of disaffection, along with fears of a coming wave of redundancies.
