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Covid hasn't broken universities - the systematic evisceration of higher education by so-called "free-market" extremism has. Covid has just exposed the giant con like nothing else could have. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/jan/17/free-market-gamble-has-covid-broken-uk-universities
I've worked at the sharp end in a Russell Group university. On a precarious contract, with stressed-out and angry colleagues, in whom any sense of collegiality or job satisfaction had been destroyed, teaching highly stressed young people who are being shamefully short-changed.
Highly qualified academic professionals micromanaged and bullied by a managerial class whose only concern is with the monetisation of education, a culture of zero trust, and students torn between a pupil-teacher model of pedagogy and the idea that they are paying customers.
Routinely, insane levels of overwork by academics (don't make me laugh about the "working time directive"), most of it pointless administration, so that nothing fruitful or genuinely creative can emerge from it. If it feels punitive, that's because, in a very real sense, it is.
Breakdown, burnout, and a spectrum of mental and physical health problems are the inevitable concomitants. Ask any academic. People who don't work in the sector often have a rose-tinted idea of what it involves. They haven't the first clue how the culture has changed.
