Britain’s universities can no longer act as visa mills – they have nowhere left to turn
There is only one appropriate reaction to the news that universities are in crisis, with 40pc set to run deficits this year: “Good. Now let them go bust.”
The expansion of the university sector has been a disaster for students. Far too many young people are promised prestige and prosperity in exchange for years of fees and study, only to emerge with a degree so devalued that they end up financially worse off.
It’s been a disaster for taxpayers, who pour money into a system that destroys economic value. And perhaps most of all, it’s been a disaster for the universities that shredded their academic standards in exchange for the right to function as visa mills.
Let’s start with the students. The expansion of higher education was supposed to herald a new age of prosperity for Britain, giving us a workforce fit for the new “knowledge economy”. Announcing his target for 50pc of young people going to higher education in 1999, Tony Blair mocked “the forces of conservatism, the elite” that had “held us back for too long”, insisting that “there is no such thing as too clever”.
There is, however, such a thing as “not clever enough”. Massively expanding the share of the population going to university appears to have coincided with a marked lowering of standards. Part of the problem is likely to have been a matter of simple mechanics: a system with more students passing through it is almost by definition one which is less selective. And if you decide to let the less academically able in, you will have to find a way to accommodate them.
By 2012, around 10pc of university students – the supposed academic elite of the future – were found to either be unable to read the instructions on a packet of aspirin or read a fuel gauge. As the authors of an OECD report tactfully put it, there was an “imbalance” between England’s “high university participation and low skills among potential entrants”.
At the risk of appearing snobbish, it does not seem unreasonable to expect a university graduate to be able to safely take a headache tablet. Yet according to the degrees the universities hand out, things have never been better. While just 8pc of students received a first class degree in 2000, fully 33pc scored top marks in 2022, with another 47pc getting upper seconds. Even the median GCSE student has a pretty good chance of getting a “top-quality” first class degree.
If you believe this is due to a revolution in teaching quality, I have a degree to sell you. A 2020 study by the Department of Education and the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that one fifth of students would be financially worse off over their lifetimes for having gone to university, the effects of taxation, lost earnings during study and repaying tuition fees swallowing up any benefit they might have gained.
When you remember that these students, in turn, benefit from a significant taxpayer subsidy, the picture looks even bleaker. Between private and public costs, roughly 30pc of students emerge from our university system at a net cost.
In a sane country, this would be a national scandal. Selling less-able students the trappings of entry into the intellectual elite while actually making them worse off is morally repugnant. Actively subsidising the institutions engaged in this is an added level of absurdity.
In Britain, however, a combination of misty-eyed sentimentality from politicians – see Blair’s comments about “the forces of conservatism” – and ruthless self-interest from the universities themselves makes addressing the problem politically toxic. Suggest cutting places, and you are pulling the drawbridge up after you, devastating the local economy that relies on the university, dashing the dreams of poor, talented students; the list goes on.
So it’s fortunate for Sir Keir Starmer that all he has to do to fix a huge share of the problem is… nothing.
Let’s go back to those students making a loss. We can have a pretty good guess at which profiles are most likely to end up losing out. Virtually every student who studies economics, medicine, maths or computing ends up better off. Studying the creative arts or philosophy, however, is likely to be a rather riskier prospect. Study at the Russell Group, and you have a better chance of a positive return than if you attend a post-92 institution.
Now, which universities are most financially at risk? Former polytechnics and those without international reputations. Which courses are being cut? In well-reported cases, art history, health and social care, philosophy, journalism. In other words, if the Government simply holds the line and insists on consolidation, it could undo a huge share of the damage done by Blair and his successors.
After all, almost every element of the current mess originates with government intervention. While Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson says that universities are “autonomous” and need to manage their budgets “without seeking any calls on the taxpayer”, it’s the Government that capped and froze tuition fees for domestic undergraduates, resulting in their real value falling by £3,000 per student.
Having expanded in response to government policy, universities then responded to the incentives they were given. With fees for foreign students uncapped, they recruited accordingly to balance their books. The result was a surge in students from poorer countries attending the least selective, cheapest institutions, and another change in government policy. The rules around student visas are now being changed.
With nowhere left to turn, the university sector is staring down the barrel of a long overdue rationalisation. There will be bumps in the road ahead. Some worthy institutions may have overstretched themselves and will pay a painful price for having done so. Towns that rely on the university economy may need support to help them through any turmoil. But ultimately, we should welcome the coming crisis on campus.
While there will still be problems in our universities that will need addressing – the promotion of Left-wing ideologies at odds with the rest of society prominent among them – the great trick played on students for the last two decades will at last have been ended.