British universities have serious problems. The recent strikes protesting against a sudden reduction in pension rights were unusually effective, and a symptom of wider discontent. Yet international comparisons invariably show our universities to be among the best in the world, and incomparably the best in the European Union. This apparent paradox is easily resolved: universities in other countries have problems too, and often worse.
Our problems are serious nevertheless. On the material side, they include financial instability due to sometimes reckless expansion; the casualisation of the academic ‘profession’, especially at its junior level, with short-term contracts, subsistence pay and no career structure; a stupendous increase in the size, cost and power of university bureaucracy; sometimes shortsighted and self-indulgent senior management; and a growing flood of regulation.
In my own university, many senior academic meetings now need a lawyer in permanent attendance, and endless teaching and research time is wasted in floundering through the morass. The funding system is politically unstable and capricious: student fees are simultaneously inadequate for the universities and burdensome for the students. Consequently, much ‘research funding’ goes on general expenses, so that instead of money being sought to pay for important research, projects are often developed and tailored in order to raise maximum funding.
Worst of all is the insidious but ever-present undermining of free speech and free enquiry, and the creeping conversion of universities from autonomous communities pursuing knowledge to business corporations obsessed with image, market share and cash flow.
Some of this may sound familiar: yes, one might almost be talking about the NHS, or indeed about any demoralised public-sector agency, for which governments do not want to take direct responsibility but cannot bring themselves to leave alone.
And yet in international terms — the paradox with which I began — British universities are outstanding.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in