Coronavirus Has Universities Edging Towards Extinction
Since 2010, when hiked tuition fees effectively put higher education behind a paywall, UK Universities have been operating a price fixing cartel.
They hold a monopoly on degree distribution and a controlling interest in our children’s futures.
By building up their brand, jostling for position in league tables and tapping into the lucrative overseas student market, universities commodified higher education so effectively that even Vice Chancellors could justify their exorbitant salaries without blushing.
But the spectacle of students stacked high in their celibate cells at university halls, where they’ll study through a wifi connection, feels like a surreal endgame.
The system has commodified higher education to such an extent that it no longer serves its students’ needs; instead, students exist to finance it.
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And the fact that universities are prepared to concede the physical campus and roll the dice on the virtual education open market smacks of desperation; it suggests that unless they go for broke, they very soon will be.
It’s a classic tale of boom and bust.
After a decade of unchecked boom, where universities massively outperformed their local economies, it was going so well that they could afford to ignore increased uneasiness about intake inequality.
In the past, universities were able unleashed the potential of poorer students but now their admissions procedures seem to privilege privilege.
Much of the university sector’s boom has been financed by tapping into the lucrative market of overseas students.
This pandemic has shown that to be a very exposed position. To paraphrase famed investor Warren Buffet, it’s only now that the tide has gone out that we can see that some of our most August universities have been swimming around stark naked.
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