England

Instead, institutes of higher learning could offer courses that break down the barriers between the arts and sciences, technology and the humanities, maths and ...

But these are inadequate to the task of continued and inevitable expansion, focusing as they do on the cramped, outdated vision of a “skilled workforce” as defined by employers. Students of all ages could walk on to campus and take part in activities put on by all the different providers involved, in all disciplines: art and design across a walkway from chemistry labs, recording studios sharing new, tree-lined piazzas with engineering workshops. These are, after all, some of the reasons universities have stayed so familiar and recognisable for so many decades. If we really wanted, we could rejuvenate the sector’s sense of purpose with a new raft of institutes of higher learning. And, setting the economics aside, universities offer a great many other benefits and opportunities: a chance for students to meet and understand others; to discover themselves; to follow their own ideas and talents; to try out new concepts; to succeed and fail; in short, to take part in what the educational theorist A new numbers cap for each university could be brought back to steady the ship, though that might have to await a new government. But although there might well be a problem with the diversity and range of ideas in the academy, choosing to focus on it amounts to pointing at a fire in a wastepaper bin while the buildings burn down. Although some less well known and smaller universities can chug on with relatively low numbers of students, or do quite well by recruiting local students who don’t want to pay to live away from the parental home, others cannot. The consequences for access and social mobility will be dire. Each of them got a figure imposed from the centre, and each received an appropriate level of funding. Those universities at the “top” asked for As, in the “middle” Bs, and so on. Many huge universities, with strong brands and big names, went on a recruitment drive that has threatened to gut everyone else.