Online learning is bad news for students

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s announcement that universities can resume face-to-face teaching this autumn has been welcomed by many students. But vice-chancellors are not so happy about the news. Most Russell Group universities have said they will continue to keep some elements of their teaching online – so-called ‘blended learning’ – revealing their opportunistic embrace of a digital ‘new normal’. For cynical university leaders, it seems that lockdowns weren’t a disaster, but an opportunity to accelerate their pre-existing plans for digital education.

Since the disastrous marketising reforms of 2011, most universities have been locked into a ferocious competition to attract students and maximise fee income. For many institutions, this has involved grandiose, debt-fuelled and speculative investments in real estate to bedazzle prospective applicants and accommodate them on campus. This risky and unsustainable approach plunged half of Britain’s universities into deficit and entailed endless restructuring and redundancies. There were also persistent attacks on staff pay, pensions and conditions as managers sought to maximise ‘surplus’ to service their debts.