The University in the Marketplace

The opening chapters of this book were a story of expansion, in which more and more universities were created after progressive reformers finally broke the Oxbridge duopoly. And, just as important, in the second part of the book we have seen it is also a story of personal growth and advance as more people have their lives transformed by higher education. In the previous two chapters we have then seen how useful this institution has become—broadening its role in professional training and promoting growth and innovation by working with business and government. The university is one of the key institutions of the twenty-first century and finds itself deeply embedded in the market economy. But there are doubters who are wary of this very success because it is changing the character of the university. One of my main objectives as universities minister was to create a more open and diverse higher education system which would work better for students. That meant more choice and competition between universities and easier entry for new providers as well as removing the number controls which limited the scope for universities to grow in response to student demand. I believed these changes would ensure students were better served and make British universities stronger in a higher education market which is increasingly global. In effect our funding reforms gave students an education voucher to be spent at the university of their choice if they met its admission requirements, to be repaid when they were graduates if they could afford to. We replaced funding via a Government agency providing grants to universities with funding via the fees (funded by loans) which students brought with them. Many people in higher education are suspicious of this wider agenda. They worry about ‘marketization’ and, just as bad, ‘consumerism’. Those market values pervade the wider environment within which Western universities operate. All these changes open up a key question: to what extent should universities themselves absorb these values or should they deliberately hold themselves apart? There are sceptics who fear that as universities grow bigger and more economically significant they betray their distinctive values.