Since the eradication of technical colleges, and the introduction of increased tuition fees, the expansion of the tertiary sector has continued unabated, with eyes set on further expansion. The swelling of the sector has largely been welcomed, with its supporters arguing that it invigorates the economies and culture of towns and cities across the nation. What once was an elite enclave made up of the privileged and extremely bright now gives more people a chance to experience higher education. 

Yet the UK university environment is in disarray. A combination of frozen fees, a fall off in international students and significant investments in shiny new buildings have led to many universities facing massive deficits. The crisis in financing is leading not only to institutions decimating departments but courting ever greater student numbers. Bigger universities are not just becoming more open to lowering entry requirements to boost numbers but are actively pushing students to choose them in a desperate bid to raise funds. 

The pressure inside bigger universities is ever growing as more and more students flow through the doors without the requisite staff increases for teaching. Class sizes are soaring unsustainably and workloads are growing just as cuts are beginning to bite. Many universities are already offering redundancy packages as they welcome a new cohort of students. As someone who is in academia, let’s say it is hardly a great time to be in the system. 

The results are pernicious both across the sector and inside individual universities. Across the sector, the inevitable long term results will be a collapse of our unique patchwork of universities with different cultures, specialisms and courses, and the establishment of a small set of behemoths operating along similar lines. Naturally, this loss of difference results in academics whose specialism is not in vogue and who cannot find ever rarer grant funding being kicked to the curb. Losing sight of the value of research and replacing it with the logic of the market is antithetical to higher educational institutions — yet for many years this is what management structures have told universities to do. 

Increasingly stretched departments are relying on fewer members of staff to teach more modules which they are not specialists in. This is not a new phenomenon but it is becoming a bigger one. Students go to university believing they will be taught by specific experts in the subject area. Rarely has it been the case that every tutor will be an expert in everything a student is being taught, sure, but growing numbers of modules are staffed by scholars with little to no expertise in that area. In some worrying cases, dissertations are being marked and double marked by scholars with zero expertise in their area of study. 

The classroom experience, which used to involve small rooms of 10-15 students per module once second year began, is already more closely resembling a comprehensive secondary school. Individual access to tutors is weakening as office hours during busy periods become too full to manage. The demands for quick marking turnarounds lower the possibility of genuine feedback and a fear of student mental health makes being direct with some students much more difficult. This is a problem of institutional decision making hamstringing teaching staff’s ability to do their job effectively and forcefully leading to a poor classroom environment and a lack of utility in the feedback we provide to students. This encourages a lack of growth in capability and culture as a whole. 

 Universities as a whole will ultimately demand less from more students, degrading what it means to go to university

The failures don’t stop there. Inside institutions, we are already witnessing a collapse of choice in modules. Narrowing the scope of what a student can choose to do has been labelled a positive step. Responding to the so-called “jam jar” problem — i.e., if you have three choices you know what you like but if you have thirty it makes you incapable of making a decision — is a real issue. Yet surely the whole point of university is experimentation? What kind of intellectual experiments can students make when they only have two or three choices? The result is a factory line of bland graduates who all seem remarkably similar to one another. 

Universities as a whole will ultimately demand less from more students, degrading what it means to go to university. This has not gone unnoticed, with notable lecturers already pointing out the falling standards amongst students. There is widespread concern over falling attendance rates, which have barely recovered since the Covid pandemic, and the growing use of AI software to produce essays. Some academics — a minority it must be said — seek to lean into such tools proclaiming them as mere additions to the modern world which we must adapt to. Others, the silent majority, fear this eradicates the point of the institution and us at all. 

The truth is the blame cannot be put solely on institutions, the students, or the prevailing culture alone. We are all to blame for the apparently inexorable decline of standards in higher education. Students are often happy to take the short cut when it is provided and not attend when it doesn’t suit their immediate need. Staff have also not pushed back hard enough against the narrowing of curricula, use of AI and the destruction of expertise which used to guide even undergraduate work. Collectively, we barely deserve a C- at this point.