Running our universities for profit was always a bad idea

Zoe Williams’ article (A generation of students is being ripped off – and our blood should be boiling, 20 May) shows that what is happening in our universities was entirely predictable following the government’s misguided attempt to marketise them.

When the teaching grant plus fee of £6,000 was replaced by a student fee of £9,000, universities reacted like lemmings by increasing student numbers to make a profit. The result has been a rise in fixed costs to pay for vast building programmes, and in administrative overheads to deal with more students and increased regulatory demands. The ratio of academic staff to students has barely shifted, classes are crowded and young academics are on insecure short-term contracts.

Students leave with high debt and a punitive payback regime that adds to the public debt on which the Treasury (that’s us) pays interest. Universities are about academics and their students, both of whom are in a worse state than before this experiment. If a student fee had to be introduced, at least it could have been on more favourable terms (zero interest, for example) and in return the money spent on a much-improved service for the same number of students, spending the increased money on the things that count.

Relying on overseas students to make up for no increase in home fees and high fixed costs was always a risky policy.
Norman Gowar
Professor emeritus and co-author, English Universities in Crisis

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