Universities are in crisis – yet Labour ministers are sitting on their hands
Jo Grady, General Secretary of the University and College Union, March 2023 (Credit: Mark Kerrison/Alamy Live News)
4 min read
Britain's universities tend to figure in the public imagination these days as political playthings, seen first and foremost as fodder for the culture wars.
Easily lost in the noise is the reality that higher education is – for now – one of the last sectors in which Britain can seriously be described as world-leading.
As an issue of public policy, higher education bears some striking similarities to other totems of decline. Consistently boxed in by the Treasury and chasing short-term hits which accord with general-election cycles, our politicians flinch and refuse to make the investments that could plausibly turn “national renewal” from rhetoric into reality. Think of the failure to seriously invest in decarbonising our economy, or the embarrassing inability to build high-speed rail connecting our major cities. With these issues can be bracketed government ministers washing their hands of our universities as their managed decline continues.
The Prime Minister must make the real tough choice: drop self-defeating fiscal constraints
We hoped for direct intervention and investment from Labour in government, especially in light of its much-touted mission for a decade of national renewal. Peter Mandelson, not someone with whom trade union leaders are often in agreement with, said last year that our universities “are indispensable... the shoulders on which we are going to build our future prosperity as a nation”. Yet as the higher education sector is engulfed by an increasingly catastrophic crisis – UCU research suggests as many as 10,000 jobs are at risk – Labour is effectively sitting on its hands.
Even with the Scottish and Welsh governments stepping in to provide some financial support to universities, the signals from Westminster are unchanged. There will be no new public investment to secure the future of our universities, and no fundamental reform to the broken system that has pushed them into this crisis. Instead, Labour seems to be preparing for further incremental increases in tuition fees; an exemplar of ‘sticking-plaster politics’.
My job is to defend the interests of my members, more than 80,000 of whom work in our universities. That’s why we are currently taking strike action, balloting for strike action, or preparing to do so at nine higher education institutions in defence of jobs. This isn’t, however, a matter of special pleading for the livelihoods of the workers who happen to be represented by a particular trade union.
If Labour fails to intervene and secure the future of our great higher education sector, this might indeed be seen as a dereliction, with mass redundancies spreading. But in view of Britain’s future – our prospects for economic growth, social cohesion, renewal of communities, and, ultimately, the possibility of national renewal – such an abdication of responsibility would be worse still: a mistake. There can be no room for complacency or further delay. We need urgent government intervention to salvage our universities, combining major public investment with wholesale reform to restore our institutions of higher learning in service of the public good.
This crisis cannot be contained without such comprehensive government action, for the pattern is clear: what begins in post-1992 (mostly former polytechnic) institutions soon enough spreads across the sector. Post-92s began making cuts in anticipation of diminished international student numbers first; then the Russell Groups followed suit.
Low immediate electoral salience. Steadfast opposition from the Treasury to investment. Crucial national infrastructure, nevertheless. The crisis in our universities has all the hallmarks of a test case for Labour’s commitment to a ‘decade of national renewal’. There is nothing sensible or pragmatic about sitting on the sidelines while our last world-leading sector crashes and burns. It’s bad for staff and students, bad for Labour, and bad for Britain.
The Prime Minister must make the real tough choice: drop self-defeating fiscal constraints and give the Education Secretary the resources she needs to stem the decline of British higher education and secure its future through public investment. Anything less would amount to spectating while the only sector in which Britain still leads the world crumbles.
Jo Grady is general secretary of UCU
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