Universities richly prize their autonomy.
Sure, there’s stuff they have to do if they want to retain access to government funds, but as a whole there are no constraints on what they get up to otherwise. It’s kind of a big deal.
There are, however, a group of universities that operate under a very expensive constraint, one that makes it far more expensive for them to employ staff because of what basically amounts to a “job tax” – a payment made to the government that will shortly rise to 28.6 per cent of every qualifying academic salary.
Our story starts in 1988, and the legal separation of the polytechnics from their local authority – via the creation of “higher education corporations” in the 1998 Education (Higher Education Corporations) Order, made under powers created in sections 121, 126, and 232 of the Education Reform Act.
