Aditya Chakrabortty’s piece is absolutely right (Mis-sold and overhyped: our universities are now just a con, 20 September). The tragedy is that it was all so predictable from the outset. But it is even worse than he sets out. When fees were allowed to increase to £9,000 (and paid by students) the average cost of teaching was about £6,000 (setting aside grants for some high-cost subjects). So, in a time of austerity, there was a bonanza. Many vice-chancellors behaved like lottery winners, committing to building projects and expansion, assuming the good times would continue to roll. At the same time, salaries of all but the highly paid were held down and a strike provoked over a pensions dispute.
In addition the government thought that the new market required new regulation, hence the nonsense of the national student survey and teaching excellence framework, with the inevitable increase in managerialism and a downgrading of academic influence in university policymaking.
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