WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Britain’s universities are a crucial source of jobs, research and learning opportunities that should be available to everyone. Yet the higher education system is in crisis. Several institutions are at imminent risk of collapse, thousands of staff have already been sacked, and courses have been cut. Politicians and the media are publicly belittling university degrees as not being ‘valuable’ enough, with the new prime minister claiming that ‘Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap’. This would be a worthy objective if the graduation cap hadn’t already steeply declined in value. Responding to constant negative headlines and comments by politicians, 34% of the British public now agree that a university education “isn’t worth the time and money”, a figure that was just 14% back in 2005.

Since the trebling of tuition fees for home students over 15 years ago, the cost of studying is simply too much for most people. Tuition fees are placing a huge burden on students because of the ‘crippling cost of debt’ that remains with them for years after they graduate. Yet fees don’t even come close to making up for the fall in government funding.

Now, overall student numbers are declining for the first time for almost a decade. Some universities have been particularly affected by the fall in overseas students caused by a hostile visa regime overseen by every single recent government. Universities have been falling over themselves to treat overseas students as ‘cash cows’ who face exorbitant fees to make up the shortfall in domestic revenue.

The impact of this crisis is not simply financial. Redundancies, restructures and course closures affect people’s lives, careers, health and wellbeing. The burden falls particularly heavily on casualised staff, disabled workers, early career researchers, professional services colleagues and students. Defending higher education means defending the people who make it possible.

Staff, students and the communities who depend on their local universities can no longer sit back and watch the decimation of the higher education sector. The right to a university education – whatever your background – is increasingly under threat. 

There is also an urgent need to rebuild respect for the academic profession. Years of insecurity, excessive workloads, falling pay, rampant managerialism, and the erosion of professional autonomy have undermined the dignity and value of academic work.  Universities must be reimagined as communities of scholarship, where teaching, research, and public service are respected, academic freedom is protected, and staff are trusted. Restoring respect for universities as centres of teaching and research in the public interest is about creating a stronger, fairer future for higher education.

We need to act now. 

According to the Office for Students, which regulates the sector, 119 institutions (around 43% of all universities) are set to forecast deficits for this academic year. The OfS predicts that this figure could rise to 163 providers within three years. Around 24 institutions are now thought to be in danger of bankruptcy -- what the regulator nauseatingly calls ‘market exit’ – in the next 12 months. A recent report into the sustainability of Scottish universities revealed a funding gap between income and spending of some £200 million and a system that is ‘increasingly fragile’.

In June 2026, a survey of UK universities found that 38% of them were planning compulsory redundancies and 79% were making voluntary redundancies. Over half had cut back on repairs and maintenance of their campuses while a further 13% had actually closed campuses in the past three years. Meanwhile nearly half of the respondents said they had cut or merged courses.

The chief executive of Universities UK has spoken of 30,000 ‘job losses’ in the last three years. These include 1000 jobs cuts at Sheffield Hallam, 381 at Goldsmiths, University of London, 120 at London Met and nearly 2700 staff placed at risk of redundancy at Nottingham. Hidden redundancies affecting both casualised staff through non-contract renewals or loss of hours and permanent staff through voluntary severance and retirement where posts are not replaced means that the actual figure for job losses is - alarmingly - likely to be much higher. 

Humanities and social sciences staff and courses have been especially hard hit with nearly 4000 academic jobs axed in 2024 alone. Exeter University threatened to sack 150 academics, with more than 500 staff at risk, targeting 85% of its humanities, arts and social sciences faculty, before backing down in the face of sustained opposition.

Universities have not mysteriously ‘lost’ jobs. No. They have assiduously cut these jobs and sometimes rehired staff on worse terms and conditions, including at Coventry, London South Bank and UCL. In the case of Southampton Solent, this involved an attempt to force staff onto an inferior pension scheme.

This is not a natural disaster but one that has been created by bad political and economic choices on the part of government and employers.

Part of the problem is a lack of sufficient government investment in higher education. The UK comes at the very bottom of OECD countries in relation to the proportion of public spending as part of overall spending on tertiary education. Only 43% of its spending on the sector comes from the public purse, well below the OECD average of approximately 70%.  Compare this to Norway, where 94% of spending on tertiary education comes from the government. This translates to just 0.5% of GDP, below the OECD average of 1.0% and below even the US, where public spending on tertiary education makes up 0.9% of GDP.

Rather than committing to sustained investment that will benefit all sections of the population, the government is determined to weaponise higher education as evidenced by the creation of the Defence Universities Alliance based on an £80m subsidy from the Ministry of Defence to support links between students, researchers and the defence industry. Shamefully, 35 universities have signed up to this project.

Universities themselves are also part of the problem. They treat overseas students as ‘cash cows’, recruit additional students to popular courses without increasing staffing on a proportionate basis and parade themselves as models of diversity and equity when presiding over entrenched gender and race-based pay gaps.

In recent years, rather than invest in staff pay and decent working conditions, universities have been more anxious to invest in land, unnecessary new buildings and risky overseas campuses. Restructuring costs (based on sacking staff) have doubled in the last five years from £160m in 2019/20 to £325m in 2024/25  while the pay of vice-chancellors increased by 5% last year to an average of over £350,000.

NEXT: The solution