Retweeting again because it really is an excellent summation of why we are where we are.

David Willets should hope to never be stuck in an elevator for a talk with an academic experiencing his version of what universities should be like. https://twitter.com/cearta/status/1350811625817862144

The reasoning in this is of very low quality - the kind we'd discourage in anyone attending university, if you will. His first point is that volume has increased and funding can't. ... Why? It certainly has done in other parts of the state. This is a choice.

The second point completely ignores what the introduction of anything called "fees" does to the relationship between staff and students. Yes, it's a graduate tax that isn't called that - but it feels like a 9.25k purchase to everyone making it because that's how it's pitched.

An actual graduate tax introduced without the notional "down payment" of 9k is a different prospect. The fees are, in essence, still government money at the time they come to universities. But for purely ideological reasons they can't be shown to be, and so we have consumers.

The idea that this doesn't discourage those less well is true in some versions of what "record applications" look like - the context here is that universities just take way more students. As a %, those of lower socio-economic backgrounds don't make up more of the student body.

The added context is that there are no alternatives to HE in the total decimation of FE, and the societal belief that you can't get any decent job these days without a Bachelor's degree has a massive impact on applications. Parental pressure, too.

My non-samples guess would be that at least 1/5th of students don't really want to be doing university, with a further 1/4th or so being talked into reading a subject they don't care for because of its economic promise. Law benefits here...

... if you consider depressed students who don't like the subject and would rather be doing a different humanity but just can't justify those degrees on these fees with what job prospects and pay look like "a benefit", anyway.

As for what appeals to Indian students: that wouldn't be anywhere near as big a driver if we didn't have to make up for funding shortfalls with international recruitment. Which is a self-perpetuating sinkhole: to get the international fees, we need to make ourselves stand out...

... which means more buildings and stuff, which them needs to be paid for with more students, who then may pile out of the buildings, which means bigger buildings, ad infinitum. All as government support gets rolled back progressively year on year.

I love having a diverse student body, but educational quality stands wholly separate from estates procurement, and so the cart here is definitely pulling the horse here. We appeal on a reputation built some on research, some on "shiny". Little on quality of learning.

So yeah, it's a bunch of easy things to spout off if you want to justify treating universities like a business. It's also completely divorced from the reality of educating as a job. The end.