Britain’s universities have been undergoing a dramatic period of change. The most obvious sign of these transformations is physical expansion. In 2004-5 there were 2,287,540 students in higher education. Some 30 per-
cent of 18 and 19 year olds in England now go to university, compared to only about 7 percent in the early 1960s. University education has ceased to be the privilege of a tiny minority – although it is still much harder for people from a manual working-class background to get to university.
Some people reject university expansion on elitist grounds, repeating the playwright John Osborne’s slogan “More means worse.” Thus right wing columnist Peter Hitchens denounces the last Tory prime minister, John Major,
for initiating the present university expansion, “another grave attack on the quality of education”. The New Labour government, by contrast, claims that university expansion is a matter of social justice: “All those who have the poten-tial to benefit from higher education should have the opportunity to do so. This is a fundamental principle which lies at the heart of building a more socially just society, because education is the best and most reliable route out of poverty and disadvantage”.
Expanding higher education is undeniably a noble goal. The elitists are quite wrong: so long as suitable resources are provided, there is no reason why the
government target of 50 percent of 18 to 30 year olds or indeed more shouldn’t have a university education and benefit from the experience. But the reality of
higher education is very different from official proclamations about equality of opportunity and social justice.
British universities are in fact being driven by priorities shaped by the needs of big business. They are being reconstructed to provide British and foreign corporations with the academic research and the skilled workers that they need to stay profitable. At the same time they are being transformed from scholarly institutions into profit centres earning foreign exchange for the economy of the United Kingdom.
To this end, expansion takes place on the cheap, as resources per student are slashed, and universities, departments and individual academics are encouraged
to compete with each other. The shift away from student grants to loans and tuition fees forces many students to work long hours to support themselves in preparation for a life of wage-labour. No wonder potential students from
poorer backgrounds are being discouraged from going to university.
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