Higher Education Lunacy

We have the deepest sympathy for Imperial's senior management. The government's schizophrenic and frankly gormless policy (or lack thereof) on higher education must be infuriating for those trying to formulate long-term plans and strategies for this institution.

The attitude adopted by recent governments towards universities can best be compared to a bully in a school playground holding smaller children by the arm and forcing them to slap themselves. Why do you keep hitting yourself?, is the taunt, as universities find themselves criticised for actions they had no choice but to take.

Remember the idealistic push to have 50% of young people attending university? Fees were introduced to help fund this push. However, as fees increased, government funding was comparatively stagnant, or worse. And universities who exceeded the government's cap on how many students attended university (yes they do cap it, handing out loans to cover the tuition fees that they introduced is expensive business) would be heavily fined. The current government has increased fees to £9,000. But at the same time as increasing fees ostensibly to give universities more freedom they also hoot and howl at universities who set their fees at the amount to which they legislated to increase it.

This government has heavily cut funding to universities, and raised fees to make up for this loss. But now, the government is threatening to make further cuts to universities who charge the maximum level of fees. Stranger still, they would prefer universities to offer tuition fee waivers to poorer students instead of higher cash bursaries during university; even though everyone except Nick Clegg can see that cash bursaries are a more effective way of ensuring that poorer students are able to attend university.

Finally, the government has begun to suggest that universities charging £9,000 should set quotas for the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. When universities are forced to select students by metrics other than ability – for the crime of seeking to plug the holes in their funding that the government has brought about – then it is clear that somebody, somewhere has been grossly incompetent.

Which is probably the closest to the truth that we're going to get. The government, bizarrely, didnít think that universities would try to charge £9,000. They falsely believed that the increase of the cap on fees would result in price competition (a result no previous rise has achieved) and as a result they have massively underestimated the amount they are going to have to extend to students to pay their tuition fees. Now universities' senior management have to deal with the government's mad ramblings as they try to control this growing financial mess. Once again, they have our deepest sympathies.