The great university racket is a national scandal

‘The streets of Oxford,” wrote the essayist William Hazlitt, “are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out.” Much has changed since the 19th century. Yet Hazlitt’s bold prediction is being sorely tested by the crisis facing the higher education sector, which is often billed as purely financial, but points to something existential.

The international student racket – overtly discriminating against domestic students – has become too blatant to ignore. This newspaper reports that universities, fearful of going bust, are considering reducing the number of British students they admit, to focus on lucrative foreign students. 

Many provincial universities are opening dubious London campuses to help recruit these golden geese. Even supposedly first-rate institutions have been accused of lowering entry standards for foreign applicants. Such a reliance on a two-tier admissions system destroys any pretence at rigour and is a national scandal.

This situation elicits dishonesty from all quarters. Some MPs champion university expansion for the short-term cash and employment their local institution brings (all subsidised by graduates and their eye-watering loan repayments). 

For a profession supposedly geared towards discovering the truth, academia practises industrial-level self-deception. Masters’ degrees are fast becoming academia’s dirty little secret. Privately, academics know full well that there’ll be students studying, say, a masters in law who would never, be admitted for an bachelor’s degree. It is an embarrassing wheeze to pretend these students are up to scratch.

Meanwhile, the post-study work visa for graduates – reintroduced under Boris Johnson – does not seem to be benefiting only the best and brightest. The Migration Advisory Committee, not usually famed for its plain speaking, has called for “a rigorous evaluation of the route”. Separate analysis has shown that more than 50 per cent of international students who switch to a “skilled worker” visa are becoming care workers, putting them on a speedy path to permanent settlement.

And what of the deal for students? Data journalist John Burn-Murdoch has analysed the dramatic decline of the graduate wage premium over the past 25 years. More than a third of graduates now work in jobs that do not require a degree.

Arguably this premium was already inflated by the credentialism arms race accompanying expansion, since many jobs that never used to require a degree now do. The Institute for Fiscal Studies claims that one in five students would have been better off financially had they not gone to university at all (accumulating £50,000 worth of debt on the way).

All this brings into sharper focus the question: what, exactly, are universities for? Are they academic institutions, committed to the pursuit of knowledge, or are they businesses? Are they a private or public good? Do they exist for British students first and foremost, or are they an international export, even poorly-disguised promoters of mass migration?

University officials insist the stalemate is necessary to keep the sector buoyant, though this is belied by the vast sums splashed on costly new buildings and the explosion of administrative jobs. Support staff outnumber academics at two thirds of universities. No one wants to believe they’re in a non-job, so this bureaucratisation often brings growth for growth’s sake – even ideas that run counter to the priorities of rank-and-file academics. 

New students at St Andrews must attend an induction requiring them to agree with certain statements about “personal guilt” and “unconscious bias”. It embodies the clash between the spirit of inquiry universities are meant to foster and institutional dogma; almost akin to a religious test where students must swear allegiance to a set of ideas which they might later critique in a philosophy tutorial.

Multiple administrations share blame for this dismal state of affairs; John Major, for abolishing the distinction between universities and polytechnics. Tony Blair’s disastrous mission to send 50 per cent of young people to university brought further expansion (it is grimly amusing that Euan Blair has amassed a fortune from an apprenticeship startup helping school leavers sidestep his dad’s legacy). Under the Coalition, the tripling of tuition fees and the removal of the student cap finally cemented universities’ status as (increasingly venal) businesses.

Whatever your views on the previous setup, its social contract at least made sense; free or subsidised education, funded by the taxpayer – on the understanding that these were the best and brightest, who might serve their country in some way. As an English graduate, I despise attacks on the humanities, the erosion of the idea of “learning for the love of it”, and the suggestion that a degree’s value should be solely determined by future earnings. However, with half of school leavers attending university, and any outstanding debts “forgiven” by the taxpayer, it inevitably becomes a public policy issue. You can have subsidised education, or the relentless expansion of the sector. You can’t have both.

British academia was once the gold standard, resting on solid foundations: sound learning, finances and organisation. Now, as the sector’s reliance on smoke and mirrors becomes ever-clearer, how long its reputation can continue to rest on past glories and self-deception remains to be seen.