The government finally retracted the policy that threatened to turn our universities into businesses. It has been a long and draining fight but seeing this result makes the exhaustion feel worth it. We still need to keep a close eye on how they restructure the sector but for now we …
August 13, 2016
Final supporters
The Government’s White Paper, Success as a Knowledge Economy, views Higher Education as if it were nothing more than an investment in human capital and a contributor to economic growth. It accepts that current universities are world-leading in teaching and research but then falsely asserts there is a problem of quality! The solution to this non-existent problem, the Government claims, is to open the sector to private for-profit teaching providers.
The proposed unitary ‘Office for Students’ is little more than an agency to ensure market competition. Ofstud is not intended to support students, but rather to enable private providers to have access to high tuition fees, to be staffed by board members with ‘the experience of fostering choice and competition, and of robust financial control’.
Students are supposedly ‘at the heart of the system’, yet the quality regime proposed – the Teaching Excellence Framework – includes no direct measures of teaching quality. Rather it is designed to facilitate increases in fees, with the possibility of a more radical lifting of the fee cap in the future once the new arrangements are established.
The Government claims these arrangements will maintain quality in higher education, but the history of for-profit higher education is littered with poor student outcomes, and with spending more on marketing and profit-sharing than on instruction. For-profits are able to do this precisely because they are ‘unbundled’ institutions relieved – now by proposed Government legislation on degree-awarding powers and the title of university – of the wider functions of a university.
Vice Chancellors have gone along with the conversion of public funding of higher education into a debt-fee model of funding to maintain their revenues. This was always a bargain struck against the interest of students, but now the very idea of a university is at stake. We call upon our colleagues and the wider public to speak out to put the values of a university, of academic freedom and of genuine quality education for all who can benefit, where these values belong: at the heart of the system.
Our vision, published as an Alternative White Paper for HE, will be published very shortly.
SignedProfessor John Holmwood (Nottingham, and Campaign for the Public University, CPU)
Elizabeth Lawrence (Sheffield Hallam, UCU President)
Sean Wallis (UCL and UCU NEC)
Tom Hickey (Brighton UCU)
Professor Howard Hotson (Oxford)
Lee Jones (Queen Mary and CPU)
Rachel Cohen (City and UCU NEC elect)
Carlo Morelli (Dundee and UCU NEC)
Professor Barry Smart (Portsmouth and CDBU)
Professor Andreas Bieler (Nottingham and UCU NEC)
Professor Des Freedman (Goldsmiths UCU)
Professor Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths UCU)
Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (Warwick and CPU)
... (and many more - see HE Convention website) ...
Please add your name by signing this petition
Updates
Reached 500 supporters
May 18, 2016
May 17, 2016
The climb toward five hundred signatures is exhausting and the path ahead remains difficult. We need to maintain this momentum because the people making these policies are still ignoring what we have to say. Take a moment to send this link to someone who understands what our universities are losing.
Reached 100 supporters
May 17, 2016
149 Comments
Experience in Australia and New Zealand shows that completion with minimal private degree granting entities reduces the voice of independent critical research still further, enslaving universities to external research funding for their most essential activities.
HE is not a commodity which can be quantified in terms of its assumed economic value, it deals with ideas and knowledge at a much higher level and should be in the hands of those who care for knowledge rather than those who care only for profit.
The privatisation of universities means my university fees don't go towards the materials for my dissertation, i have to spend £1000 of my own money
I have left a permanent job in the UK partly because of what is happening to HE there. This white paper will make things even worse. I owe so much to British HE - to the many excellent and wonderful people there, who are doing their job out of a genuine passion for research and teaching. In spite of QA, impact, and the looming TEF.
Former Chair of Academic Studies, and drove first Academic Audit of Bath. Audit of paperwork is not the same as quality.
(Bangor)
UCL
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The government finally retracted the policy that threatened to turn our universities into businesses. It has been a long and draining fight but seeing this result makes the exhaustion feel worth it. We still need to keep a close eye on how they restructure the sector but for now we …
August 13, 2016
Final supporters
The Government’s White Paper, Success as a Knowledge Economy, views Higher Education as if it were nothing more than an investment in human capital and a contributor to economic growth. It accepts that current universities are world-leading in teaching and research but then falsely asserts there is a problem of quality! The solution to this non-existent problem, the Government claims, is to open the sector to private for-profit teaching providers.
The proposed unitary ‘Office for Students’ is little more than an agency to ensure market competition. Ofstud is not intended to support students, but rather to enable private providers to have access to high tuition fees, to be staffed by board members with ‘the experience of fostering choice and competition, and of robust financial control’.
Students are supposedly ‘at the heart of the system’, yet the quality regime proposed – the Teaching Excellence Framework – includes no direct measures of teaching quality. Rather it is designed to facilitate increases in fees, with the possibility of a more radical lifting of the fee cap in the future once the new arrangements are established.
The Government claims these arrangements will maintain quality in higher education, but the history of for-profit higher education is littered with poor student outcomes, and with spending more on marketing and profit-sharing than on instruction. For-profits are able to do this precisely because they are ‘unbundled’ institutions relieved – now by proposed Government legislation on degree-awarding powers and the title of university – of the wider functions of a university.
Vice Chancellors have gone along with the conversion of public funding of higher education into a debt-fee model of funding to maintain their revenues. This was always a bargain struck against the interest of students, but now the very idea of a university is at stake. We call upon our colleagues and the wider public to speak out to put the values of a university, of academic freedom and of genuine quality education for all who can benefit, where these values belong: at the heart of the system.
Our vision, published as an Alternative White Paper for HE, will be published very shortly.
SignedProfessor John Holmwood (Nottingham, and Campaign for the Public University, CPU)
Elizabeth Lawrence (Sheffield Hallam, UCU President)
Sean Wallis (UCL and UCU NEC)
Tom Hickey (Brighton UCU)
Professor Howard Hotson (Oxford)
Lee Jones (Queen Mary and CPU)
Rachel Cohen (City and UCU NEC elect)
Carlo Morelli (Dundee and UCU NEC)
Professor Barry Smart (Portsmouth and CDBU)
Professor Andreas Bieler (Nottingham and UCU NEC)
Professor Des Freedman (Goldsmiths UCU)
Professor Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths UCU)
Professor Gurminder K Bhambra (Warwick and CPU)
... (and many more - see HE Convention website) ...
Please add your name by signing this petition
Updates
Reached 500 supporters
May 18, 2016
May 17, 2016
The climb toward five hundred signatures is exhausting and the path ahead remains difficult. We need to maintain this momentum because the people making these policies are still ignoring what we have to say. Take a moment to send this link to someone who understands what our universities are losing.
Reached 100 supporters
May 17, 2016
149 Comments
In addition:- the separation of teaching & research will potentially produce an elite group of research-led Universities and the rest being undergraduate student factories.
Experience in Australia and New Zealand shows that completion with minimal private degree granting entities reduces the voice of independent critical research still further, enslaving universities to external research funding for their most essential activities.
HE is not a commodity which can be quantified in terms of its assumed economic value, it deals with ideas and knowledge at a much higher level and should be in the hands of those who care for knowledge rather than those who care only for profit.
The privatisation of universities means my university fees don't go towards the materials for my dissertation, i have to spend £1000 of my own money
I have left a permanent job in the UK partly because of what is happening to HE there. This white paper will make things even worse. I owe so much to British HE - to the many excellent and wonderful people there, who are doing their job out of a genuine passion for research and teaching. In spite of QA, impact, and the looming TEF.
Former Chair of Academic Studies, and drove first Academic Audit of Bath. Audit of paperwork is not the same as quality.
(Bangor)
UCL
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In addition:- the separation of teaching & research will potentially produce an elite group of research-led Universities and the rest being undergraduate student factories.