While the terror of the ‘demographic dip’ may have receded (at least temporarily), a funding freeze, pension pressures, inflation and volatile demand has led to dismal financial projections even while vice-chancellors are accused of sitting on multi-billion-pound surpluses. Policy sharks have been circling, citing elitism, spending profligacy, unequal outcomes and low value for money. Politicians inevitably pick up on this mood and become more open to alternatives to university education or proposals to cut down on ‘low value degrees’, ‘grade inflation’, and so forth. There have even been calls for the re-introduction of the ‘binary divide’ between academic and technical institutions. When the New Statesman is publishing long reads entitled, ‘The Great University Con’ there is more than a little local difficulty to address. At a time when higher education is expanding right around the world there is a depressing and hostile undercurrent at home which questions the very purpose of universities.
Meanwhile, there is insufficient evidence of a concerted, collective fightback in the sector, and despite some excellent university work during the COVID-19 pandemic higher education has struggled to convey a compelling narrative about its broader contribution to economy and society. It is essential that vice-chancellors and those who believe in the transformative value of universities develop imaginative, innovative and accessible propositions about how the sector offers value to the world.
