By Joe Langabeer
Recently, I read a review of Bad Education by Matt Goodwin on a blog from the Higher Education Policy Institute. For those unfamiliar with the author, Goodwin was a professor of Politics at the University of Kent and a general defender of right-wing politics. Since leaving his university post, he has joined GB News as a presenter alongside Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The premise of Goodwin’s book is that the left has taken over university institutions, leading to their struggle to remain relevant in the 21st century, both financially and in terms of research quality. However, both the reviewer and myself, after spending some time reading the book to assess whether there was any substance to his arguments, found nothing tangible.
Goodwin’s claims about the left “infiltrating” universities lack credible evidence. Much of his reasoning reads more like a television soap.0, where he attributes his failure to climb the academic ranks to a conspiracy against him because of his political views. While Goodwin acknowledges a crisis in universities, the reality is that his own political stance, supporting the encroachment of capital into institutions and the privatisation of all public sectors—is largely responsible for the dire state of higher education.
The exorbitant rise in tuition fees, wasteful spending on vanity projects, and the dependence on lecturers on zero-hours contracts, have left institutions increasingly tethered to the private sector, only for that sector to abandon them, because, by its very nature, education does not generate profit.
Privatisation
Academics often use the term marketisation to describe the growing influence of the private sector in university institutions. While I understand why they use this phrase—because past Tory and New Labour governments have never explicitly announced the privatisation of universities—it has, in effect, already happened. Since the early 1980s, when Thatcher’s government abolished the remaining subsidies for overseas students’ fees, universities have increasingly relied on private investment.
During Thatcher’s tenure, funding for teaching and research were separated, and selective research funding was introduced, meaning that government funding was based on its own research interests, while allowing private companies to step in and effectively ‘buy out’ researchers for their own purposes.
In 1990, “top-up” loans for students were introduced, alongside the creation of the Student Loans Company, which replaced maintenance grants—originally designed to support students’ living costs—with loans. Although university tuition was still free at this stage, students now had to take out loans that they would need to repay, based on their earnings after graduation.
The full privatisation of universities took hold during the New Labour years, beginning with the introduction of “top-up” tuition fees in 1998, and culminating in the introduction of variable fees of £3,000 in 2006. We also saw a mass expansion of universities; in 2004, rule changes allowed institutions to grant degrees without requiring research qualifications.
Finally, the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition government oversaw a dramatic tuition fee hike to £9,000 in 2012. Alongside this, there have been severe cuts to government subsidies for courses, meaning that most university programmes now operate solely from tuition fees. This has led to the widespread cutting of courses when student numbers fail to make them financially ‘viable’.
Successive government decisions
While other factors have contributed to the privatisation of university institutions, these policies stem from successive governments’ decisions on how Higher Education is funded and managed. As a result, students have borne the brunt of these changes, facing exorbitant fees for a sector that increasingly prioritises quantity over quality and filling the pockets of university leaderships rather than investing in education itself.
But this raises a question: Should we really rely on universities as the primary means of training young workers for the job market? This is an important question because young people today face an increasingly precarious job market, with few alternative routes into employment, leaving them with little choice but to pursue a university education. Aside from 2023, which saw a slight decline in university admissions, record numbers of young people continue to enter higher education.
According to UCAS data, in 2021, 37% of all 18-year-olds started a full-time undergraduate course—the highest proportion on record—including a record-breaking 30,000 students from disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2024, the figure remains high at 36.4%, then slightly lower than 2023 but still well above historical averages.
Meanwhile, data from the House of Commons Library suggests that university application rates have now reached a new high of 41%, meaning almost half of young people are seeking to attend university. But do young people actually want to go to university, or are they being forced into it due to a lack of alternative training opportunities for work?
A 2021 report by the All-Party Parliamentary University Group surveyed students on whether they believed university was worth it, based on their initial motivations for attending. It found that 63% of respondents were doing so primarily to secure a job or career.
However, in a surprising interpretation of the data, one of the report’s authors, Tory MP, Chris Skidmore, suggested that young people are not only attending university for career prospects but also to become better educated and develop skills in their chosen field. This seems like a complete misreading of the findings, as the majority of students are clearly focused on obtaining a degree as a means to secure employment.
Students are not wrong to believe that a degree is now a prerequisite for future job prospects. According to a 2022 survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 57% of employers now require candidates to hold a degree or postgraduate qualification for employment. Yet, despite this, 33% of employers believe that graduates are not adequately prepared for the workplace. Employers report the greatest difficulty in finding workers with the right skills, particularly technical skills, which are cited as the hardest to recruit for, with 68% of businesses struggling to fill these roles.
Other Opportunities
With students unable to secure jobs without a university degree, and employers believing that degrees do not adequately prepare workers for the workplace, where do young people go to develop their skills? Historically, those who felt university wasn’t for them would pursue technical qualifications or take the apprenticeship route, gaining hands-on practical training with an employer while earning a modest salary subsidised by the government.
Much of this training was funded by local post-16 colleges working in partnership with local employers, but the Tories decimated these during their era of austerity. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which examined the state of college finances, found that spending on English colleges has been slashed by around £3 billion over the past 14 years.
And which courses were hit the hardest? Adult skills and apprenticeships, which suffered a £2 billion cut in government funding, leading to apprenticeship schemes being either squeezed or removed from the curriculums altogether in favour of traditional routes such as A-levels—the qualification typically required for university entry.
The last Tory government attempted to address this by introducing T-levels, a ‘technical’ qualification supposedly equivalent to an A-level. These courses promised students work experience with various employers, with a greater focus on vocational training, rather than classroom-based learning.
Conversely, unlike apprenticeships, students would now undertake work experience for free, as neither the government nor employers were required to pay them. This was designed as a cost-cutting measure, effectively replacing apprenticeships, while also reducing the number of BTEC qualifications—vocational courses that offered more classroom learning but less work experience than apprenticeships.
However, a report from Ofsted, in a rare positive intervention, found that T-levels offered poor value to students, with many placements being irrelevant to their chosen vocation. As a result, a significant number of students dropped out by the end of their first year, feeling misled about the course content.
It was clear from the outset that T-levels were not going to succeed, as they failed to provide what apprenticeships traditionally offered: real work experience and a small but essential income to support young people while they trained. Although apprenticeship wages remain pitiful and are in urgent need of being raised, they were at least a more attractive option for young people who wanted to enter the workforce.
Institutional Greed
With the decline of apprenticeships, the dismal uptake of T-levels, and a general lack of opportunities for students to enter the workforce, it’s no surprise that universities have seen a surge in student numbers. You would think that a sector experiencing such a year-on-year growth in its “customer base” would be financially secure. Yet, many universities are cutting staff, scrapping courses, and even facing the risk of bankruptcy.
According to the Office for Students (OfS), as reported in an article from the Financial Times in November, nearly three-quarters of universities are expected to be in deficit by September 2025, with an estimated sector-wide income decline of £3.4 billion. The OfS attributes this to institutions falling short of their UK undergraduate recruitment forecasts and failing to meet international student targets.
As a result, almost 100 institutions are either already implementing or preparing for redundancy and restructuring programmes, with permanent staff and management positions being axed in a desperate attempt to remain “sustainable”.
Of course, some of this financial turmoil is linked to policy decisions made by the last Tory government. Last year, the Tories imposed restrictions preventing international students from bringing their families with them, making the UK a less attractive destination for study. Universities relied heavily on international student fees to plug financial gaps, with tuition ranging from £11,400 to £38,000, according to the British Council.
The same applies to postgraduate courses, where international enrolment is often higher than that of domestic students. Brexit has only exacerbated the problem. Before, EU students paid the same fees as home students, helping to fill course places. Now, with EU students classified as international students and required to pay significantly higher fees, fewer are choosing to study in Britain.
While many ‘liberals’, including Guardian writers, lament the Tory restrictions on international students, the real disgrace is that universities charge them such extortionate fees, while providing the exact same education as domestic students. It’s important to remember that it is not the government that sets international tuition fees, but the universities themselves. They have the power to lower these fees and bring them in line with domestic rates, but they refuse—because for these institutions, it is pure greed.
Since the privatisation of universities, we have seen massive salary increases for vice-chancellors and university board members, while lecturers and staff have received minimal pay rises and are now facing redundancies. In an article from Times Higher Education in January 2025, the average annual pay for Russell Group vice-chancellors has risen to £400,000—a 1% increase from the previous year’s £396,000. This figure does not include the salaries of other senior leadership figures, who receive similarly inflated pay packets.
At the same time, universities have been pouring billions into vanity projects. The Office for Students, as reported by the University and College Union (UCU), confirmed that capital expenditure increased by 36% in 2022 alone. Much of this spending has gone toward constructing new buildings to house even more students and expanding in-house accommodation—allowing universities to profit further from students’ maintenance loans.
Meanwhile, universities have also been hoarding vast sums of unused cash, with no clear explanation for why these reserves are not being spent. The UCU has repeatedly called for these funds to be redirected toward staff pay rises and hiring more lecturers to cope with ever-increasing workloads.
Then there is the creeping gig economy model that now dominates academic employment in higher education. A recent report from Oxford UCU found that the majority of core tutorial teaching is now delivered by academics on fixed-term contracts or hourly-paid roles, with many of them on zero-hour contracts.
Even worse, many of these contracts offer pay that falls below the national living wage and provide little to no rights regarding sick pay or holiday entitlement. Such precarious contracts are now the norm in many universities, with postgraduate researchers—including PhD students—forced to take on teaching responsibilities as part of their academic requirements, often with little financial security in return.
Reversing Privatisation
With the expansion of the university system, increasingly backed by the private sector, we are now seeing the consequences of a system bloated by its own greed. Universities are facing a supply and demand crisis.
As student numbers decline, coupled with the loss of international students and their lucrative tuition fees, institutions will be forced to shrink. But it won’t be through cutting back on the constant construction of student accommodation, nor will vice-chancellors reduce their inflated salaries. Instead, students will be saddled with higher debt, lecturers will face mass layoffs, and more tutors will be pushed onto precarious contracts that strip them of decent pay and working conditions.
The labour movement has to fight for the government to end this failed privatisation experiment. Tuition fees need to be scrapped entirely and university status should not be awarded to every institution that applies. The private sector has to be prevented from gorging itself on student debt.
Public funding for courses and research should be reinstated so that institutions no longer rely on tuition fees for survival. The exorbitant wages of university leaders have to be cut and the funds reinvested into lecturers’ pay. Zero-hour contracts for lecturers should be banned and replace with permanent, secure contracts. Not only would this improve the livelihoods of staff, but it would also enhance the quality and consistency of education for students.
However, this crisis has also been fuelled by the lack of alternative pathways for young people beyond university. Instead of endlessly expanding the university sector, Labour should be rebuilding vocational and technical training. This means restoring apprenticeships and other forms of work-based education that offer young people real work experience, with a decent apprenticeship wage.
Labour needs to smash the in-built prejudice that exists in higher education against technical education, as if it is in some way ‘second class’. Many students with technical qualifications go on to acquire Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas (HNC and HND) that are at least equivalent in depth and scope to degrees, but a lot more attuned to the world of work.
Employers are already signalling that graduates lack the necessary skills for the workforce—proving that an academic degree alone is not an adequate form of training.
I speak from experience. I went through the university system, completing my studies up to PhD level, and have worked as a lecturer at multiple institutions. While I didn’t feel particularly drawn to university when I started my undergraduate degree, I eventually found my calling in research and education, making it the best decision I ever made.
But that was because I enjoyed research. Many young people do not, and forcing them down an academic path when they could thrive in other forms of training is a disservice to their future.
Labour has made some attempts to address this issue, such as proposing the creation of technical colleges—though little has been mentioned about this since the general election. They have also acknowledged the need for more apprenticeships, which I fully support. However, their decision to raise tuition fees is disgraceful, serving only to funnel even more money into an already overfed university sector.
The UCU, while rightly fighting staff redundancies, has yet to confront the root of the problem. They should be campaigning for a full reversal of university privatisation, an end to tuition fees, permanent contracts for lecturers, and restored apprenticeship funding in colleges. Young people need a range of opportunities for their future—not just the narrow, debt-ridden path of university. It’s time to stop feeding the beast.
Feature picture, of Sussex University monolith, from Wikimedia Commons, here.
