From a THE mailing today
It is a troubling sign of the times, and the crisis that many fear higher education is in, that several of our analyses this week relate to the theme of university collapse.
An essay on the massification of UK higher education argues that “the current state of UK universities seems like a very bad deal for those involved, bad for society and ultimately unsustainable”, with high participation rates and declining income levels creating a system that author Lincoln Allison compares to that of the Soviet Union.
“The reasons to fear the collapse of the system, however, are not that it’s bad or unfair but that it’s unfundable,” writes the emeritus reader in politics at the University of Warwick.
“The university sector has been bloated to an unsustainable level and is now bound to decline; the questions are by how much and how will it happen.”