Prof Des Freedman, Michael Bassey, John Sommer and Sally Bates respond to an article about the dire state of Britain’s higher education institutions
Gaby Hinsliff (Britain’s universities are in freefall – and saving them will take more than funding, 29 March) says “the story [of decline] starts with the freezing of tuition fees in 2017”.
However, this was the outcome, not the cause, of a crisis that began with the decision by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 to treble tuition fees and to build a “market” in UK higher education. Since then, policymakers and university managers have pursued a disastrous ideological project to turn higher education into a commodity rather than to treat it as a public good.
