Post by dodger on Feb 13, 2014 16:46:11 GMT
Excellent study of the Coalition's higher education policy, 13 Feb 2014
This Will Podmore review is from: The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education (Paperback)
This fine book is a detailed demolition of the Coalition’s higher education policy. McGettigan shows that “the government is not simply implementing a change driven by temporary difficulties; it does not intend to restore the block grant when national finances improve.” It aims to end public funding of higher education, whatever the consequences for the quality of our universities.
The government is pursuing “a privatisation agenda, opening space for private equity and commercial companies to operate within the public higher education system and distribute profits out to backers, shareholders and owners.” The government is intervening to favour private providers like equity funds, not to ensure high quality or to improve the student experience. It aims only to create profit opportunities.
The financial services sector donated half the £12.2 million given to the Conservative Party. Hedge fund managers and financiers gave it £2.69 million. David Willetts, the Minister of Universities and Science, held 12 meetings with representatives from private equity firms and US education companies before the government published the Higher Education White Paper in June 2011.
Marketisation is changing higher education from a public good into a source of private profit. It is not about meeting our country’s needs for a high-skill, highly-educated working class. It is not about assisting people to meet their aspirations for greater abilities, skills and culture.
The excessive tuition fees are deterring applicants: the September 2012 figures from UCAS show that accepted places at English universities were down by 50,000 students compared to 2011, a 15 per cent drop.
McGettigan sums up, “Deprofessionalisation … is a persistent theme of recent privatisation agendas. Casualisation of staff is the key feature of cheap, for-profit provision, where staff are less qualified and self-directed study groups without supervision are a feature of ‘contact time’ at some US operations. Of course, there is also a reserve army of labour, post-docs and PhD students, who are willing to work for lower wages.”
All the unions involved in higher education have to fight for better pay and conditions, to resist the growing corporatism which would wreck one of the world’s finest systems of higher education.