According to the polls, a political era will soon be coming to an end.
Back in 2011, the Westminster government’s White Paper on the sector – called Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System – ushered in what many would regard as 14 years of hyper-marketisation.
Its central idea was that students were to be “put in the driving seat” – both through choice and voice.
A sweeping away of number controls was to have provided the ultimate demand-led system – programmes would reflect their choices, and providers would compete to offer the best courses and facilities.
Much of that pro-market rhetorical framing disappeared when David Willetts left office – replaced with complaints that students don’t, in fact, know best over everything from the subjects they seem to want to study to their “woke” demands for curriculum reform.
