Abstract
This chapter traces changes to English universities as a result of changing political economic conditions in the United Kingdom. These conditions shifted funding and governance mechanisms in unprecedented ways, and so entailed dramatic transformations for English universities. The chapter calls attention to the “imaginators,” meaning a group of campus officials and government officers, who systematically laid the groundwork for these reforms. Analysis of documents such as speeches and policy reports highlights the imaginators’ collective efforts to recast and repurpose existing university infrastructure. This effort has been gradual and concerted, creating mechanisms that could be redeployed when the Great Recession provided a crisis moment. The resulting system yields numerous opportunities for private-sector actors to capture profits from state-subsidized activities, but may provide more limited options to students and faculty.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Household debt rose from 69 % of GDP in 1997 to 100 % in 2006 – even before the recession hit – before peaking at 110 % in 2009 and falling back slightly to 99 % now [2013]’ (Jones 2013).
- 2.
The panel chairman, John Browne, was a businessman close to Mandelson and the Labour government. As chief executive of BP he was lauded for the expansion of BP into the USA and Russia and his ‘Sun King’ autocratic style, but later criticised as responsible for instilling high risk strategies and a poor safety culture. He was forced to resign as chief executive of BP when found by a judge to have lied to the court but perjury did not disqualify him from chairing a national review of an institution whose role some would describe as fearless pursuit of truth. Other members of the panel were: two vice chancellors, one with engineering expertise and the other formerly chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England; a former adviser to Blair and Obama on education reforms who was currently head of McKinsey’s Global Education Practice; a former director McKinsey & Co, now chief executive of Standard Chartered bank; an economist specialising in competition analysis; and a former chairman of the British Youth Council now on the Lottery Fund board. The panel consisted of no representatives of students or academics.
- 3.
RAB stands for Resource Accounting and Budgeting.
- 4.
Vice chancellors’ average pay had increased from £92,000 in 1994/1995 to £254,000 in 2009/2010. The prime minister, on £142,000, was paid less than every vice chancellor. Pay differentials within the university had also widened from 1994/2005 when vice chancellors were paid 2.8 times as much as a top senior lecturer, to 4.6 times the pay of a top senior lecturer in 2009/2010. Vice chancellors model their argument for such pay on those of private executives. The High Pay Commission in 2010 was highly critical of such widening differentials. In a period what FTSE 100 executives’ pay had risen by 49 %, their average employee’s pay had risen by 2.7 %, and these were often executive rewards for failure. It was also critical of the argument that executives of complex organisations in international markets deserve high salaries; there was no evidence of international competition for talent because only 1 FTSE 100 CEO had been poached in 5 years. Universities clearly share with corporations a moral hazard when managers divert such a large share of resources to private purposes as de facto owners that they think themselves stewards of their own enterprise.
- 5.
BBC Wales reporters found that the University of Wales, founded 1893, had become a ‘validation machine’, selling its powers to validate degrees to bogus operators. In 2003–2004 the university validated 20 organisations in the UK and 55 overseas, generating £3 million (40 % of its income). By 2009–2010, the university earned £10.3 million from about 140 collaborative centres in 30 countries. The vice chancellor’s salary and pension package also rose from £84,284 in 2007–2008 (the year he was appointed) to £139,000 in 2009–2010. The QAA’s 2001 inspection said it had confidence in the university, but the university admitted it outsourced much of the validation work to academics in other universities by making a financial contribution to their department. The second BBC Wales undercover investigation not only found that the checks were inadequate but also an alleged visa scam at a University of Wales collaborative centre, Rayat London College. In autumn 2011, the University of Wales was dissolved (Matthews 2012).
- 6.
Laureate is endowed by Harvard University and in England already offered online degrees in partnership with Liverpool University, but its main business plan was to take control of failing institutions with local degree awarding powers and run them as autonomous institutions (e.g. College of Santa Fe New Mexico where the city took over its assets and debts and leased it to Laureate).
- 7.
ITT Educational Services was owned by Career Education Corporation, which had a London campus offering degrees accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (recognised by US Department of Education) but which failed an audit by UK’s Quality Assurance Agency.
- 8.
State-owned companies that have been sold include BP, National Enterprise Board, Regional Water Authorities, Property Services Agency, British Aerospace, Cable and Wireless (global communications), Amersham International (computers), National Freight Company, the land owned by the Forestry Commission, Railways. The list goes on and most recently includes the Post Office.
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Wright, S. (2016). The Imaginators of English University Reform. In: Slaughter, S., Taylor, B. (eds) Higher Education, Stratification, and Workforce Development. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21512-9_7
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