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England’s New Private Liberal Arts College: “New College of the Humanities”

Brian Leiter

It is the brainchild of philosopher A.C. Grayling, formerly of Birkbeck, who will be the Master of the College, which will offer degrees in History, Philosophy, English, and Economics, as well as Law.  Tuition will be 18,000 GBP, so double the Oxbridge rate (though still far cheaper than liberal arts colleges in the U.S.).  The founding faculty is replete with renowned U.K. faculty who have hit the mandatory retirement age at other universities, as well as several "marquee" names from the U.S., whose frequency of presence in the classroom one might reasonably wonder about.  

On the one hand, the arrival of New College will just exacerbate the neoliberal trend in higher education in Britain, but I fear that battle is already lost.  On the other hand, New College will presumably free professors from the increasingly idiotic bureaucratic requirements of higher education in Britain, which will work to the advantage of both faculty and students.  It is also welcome, of course, to see priority given to such core intellectual subjects as History and Philosophy.   I hope New College is a success.  What do readers think?  Signed comments will be very strongly preferred.

UPDATE:   Grayling here defends the enterprise against a challenge from the head of the Birkbeck Student Union (scroll down).

ANOTHER:  An informative item from The Guardian.  I have to say the apparently mandatory "business skills" course is a bit creepy, and seems rather hard to square with the high-minded emphasis on core scholarly disciplines.  (You certainly won't find anything like that in the elite American colleges that are purportedly the model.)

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50 responses to “England’s New Private Liberal Arts College: “New College of the Humanities””

  1. Pablo K

    It hardly seems a success we should hope for.

    1) Most of the Professoriate are already registered as teachers or researchers at at least one other university (whether in the UK or US). It seems highly likely that the teaching load will be borne by the more junior faculty listed as 'conveners and other teachers', making the high profile selling-point a marketing exercise, rather than a genuinely new intellectual culture for the most courageous and gifted minds;

    2) £18,000 may be cheap by US standards, but it is a fortune in the UK. Recall the pathway of tuition fee increases. When I graduated with my BSc in 2005, tuition fees were still £1,000 for a single year of undergraduate teaching (and that was at the LSE). From 2006 they were £3,000. From 2012 they will be £9,000 for most institutions. An £8,000 increase in 7 years. Considering that the UK has massively underfunded higher education over the last decades (see the Howard Hotson piece in the LRB on the Ivy League a few issues back), the emergence of private higher education institutions charging at this rate should be regarded as insidious;

    3) The entry requirements for the New College seem comparatively low. The touted 20% of applicants who will get some help (it is not at all clear how many will have all their fees waived) will not make up for the majority of students, who look likely to be medium performing privately educated rich kids who will be able to buy one-on-one access and more contact hours than their less well-healed compatriots;

    4) This is not a genuine private enterprise. Leaving aside that many of the teachers have built their reputations out of the public purse, they will be using University of London resources and granting degrees with the University of London stamp (and likely using those publicly-funded libraries too), providing a legitimacy and effective subsidy from the state, despite their rhetoric of private sector innovation;

    5) All of this is happening against a backdrop of the decimation of humanities elsewhere in the system. London Met is losing 70% of its course provision, largely from the humanities and arts, although it serves more black and ethnic minority students than the whole Russell Group combined. This is justified on the basis that arts and humanities are out-dated and un-productive. The birth of the New College is not unrelated, but should be viewed as part of a systematic dynamic shifting 'critical' subjects to the rich and away from the poor, who are deemed better suited to cod-vocational training.

    BL COMMENT: If New College did not exist, would there be more funding for humanities subjects at the post-92 universities? Obviously not. If New College does exist, and it thrives, emphasizing a core humanities curriculum, might this influence government priorities in higher education funding in the future? One might think it will.

    Reply
  2. Laurence B McCullough

    This is not a liberal arts college as we know that model in the US. There are no curricula in physical, life, or social sciences. It is just a humanities program, with science for jocks "module." Label it for its counterpart in the US: a school of humanities in a university. It doesn't emphasize a core humanities curriculum; it is a core humanities curriculum.

    BL COMMENT: There is one social science field: economics. Bear in mind that undergraduate education in Britain, even at the full-service universities, is always highly specialized, so in that sense the "liberal arts" education model is nowhere to be found in Britain.

    Reply
  3. Pablo K

    Thanks for the comment Professor Leiter. I think your support on the grounds of building the general case for humanities/arts would be right if it wasn't for the problem that the New College will systematically advantage the wealthiest. Its fee level is twice that of Oxford and Cambridge for an entry year in which they will just have tripled theirs. Put otherwise, it is 600% higher than the current cost of an Oxbridge degree. At least 80% of the students will be from incredibly privileged backgrounds and will go on to profit from the unique pedagogical access (one-on-one tutoring) and the connections they will build through this institution. Its effect will thus be far from neutral.

    It is also the first institution on this model of any repute in the UK and is therefore in a vanguardist role for the much wider introduction of a two-tier system in the UK where the wealthiest get the best staff/student ratios and the best lecturers. This has to be set against any possible benefit to government priorities.

    And on that point, I think you wildly over-estimate the likely response by government. Far from using New College as evidence for more funding in arts and humanities, they will use it to justify *less*, since they can claim that this is 'the market' working (complete with scholarships for the poor!) and that government spending is therefore not necessary! To the bin with the antiquated ways of public subsidy and public good. May a thousand New Colleges bloom!

    New College may not be the cause of reduced humanities funding, but it certainly is a result of that reduction, even leaving aside the strong possibility that its founders have inside info on the higher education white paper (not yet formally published) since they seem confident that they will not be penalised for their arrangements under any new rules.

    BL COMMENT: Your speculations may prove correct, they may not. I do think you are neglecting one of the main factors behind this development, namely, the exhaustion of English academics with government bureaucracy, which, in addition to budget cuts, has been a prime factor in the exodus of academics from Britain. Of course, for New College to provide a meaningful alternative, it will have to get past staffing itself with faculty in their dotage or retirement.

    Reply
  4. Charlie

    In regards to Pablo K's post, point number 3.
    Please explain how "the entry requirements for the New College seem comparatively low" and the majority of students will only be "medium performing" ?

    The only entrance requirements given are AAA for all subjects.

    Thats the same as Oxford, and the majority of courses at LSE etc.

    I would hardly call that comparatively low. In fact for a newly opened institution that is actually starting off with the bar pretty high. Undoubtedly once the NCH establishes itself entrance requirement will rise even more.

    Reply
  5. Pablo K

    The New Colleges appears to require University of London minimum requirements only (plus the fees) – http://www.nchum.org/courses/minimum-entrance-requirements – which are as follows:

    "These are minimum University of London requirements and in practice, if you meet the College’s entry requirements, you are almost certain to meet the University's minimum requirements.

    EITHER passes in two subjects at GCE ‘A’ level + at least three further subjects at GCSE or GCE ‘O’ level (at not less than grade C or a ‘pass’ if taken prior to 1975)

    OR three subjects at GCE ‘A’ level (with one ‘A’ level at not less than grade D)

    OR three subjects at GCE ‘A’ level + one further subject at GCSE or GCE ‘O’ level (at not less than grade C)

    OR two subjects at GCE ‘A’ level + two further subjects at ‘AS’ level."

    Specific course requirements are for 'O' levels in English at C or above or in Maths at C or above if you're taking economics.

    It says New College requirements will exceed this in nearly every case, but I don't see a *requirement* of AAA for entry. I notice that individual pages have other 'very general guides' specifying AAA (which is presumably where your figures are from), which might well mean that I'm mistaken. Things are likely complicated by not using the UCAS system, being a new body (and therefore unsure about how many applicants they'll have, which I don't hold against them) and being a for-profit institution.

    If New College is not bound by a cap on student numbers (and I assume that, as a private institution, they're not), they will want to get in as many students as they can bear at £18,000 a year.

    Reply
  6. Tim Bayne

    I share Pablo K's reservations about this project, and very much look forward to reading what Simon Blackburn, Peter Singer and Ronald Dworkin have to say in defence of it. It seems to me very likely to put upwards pressure on the cost of university eduction in the UK: if private institutions are charging £18k, then the best public institutions are going to feel under significant pressure to increase their fees for fear of being seen to offer "cheap" degrees.

    The publicity announces that the NCH will have scholarships and exhibition schemes" to "ensure that finance should not be a barrier to any talented UK student", but the media reports indicate that only one-fifth of places will come with financial assistance. I find it hard to believe that the most talented 80% of would-be applicants will be able to afford £18,000 per annum.

    It will also be interesting to see how this develop on the pedagogical front. Grayling has been quoted as saying that students "will have one-to-one tutorials and will be taught by some of the world’s leading academics.” This, of course, is compatible with the leading academics in question taking none of the much-touted one-to-one tutorials.

    If this represents a "new model" for higher eduction in the humanities then it is not one that I for one welcome. It is certainly hard to see how it might make a humanities education more accessible to those who would not otherwise have access to it, which is certainly one thing that one might want from a "new model for higher eduction in the humanities."

    Reply
  7. Sydney Penner

    One might have thought that starting a new institution would make for a good opportunity to assemble a more diverse faculty, given that the numbers wouldn't be skewed by people hired decades ago. But New College's professoriate manages to make philosophy departments look diverse.

    Reply
  8. Charlie

    Thanks for replying Pablo.

    Minimum/general entry requirements and actual entry requirements are two very different things, the first being almost irrelevant.

    Most universities list general entry requirements on their website, for example see those of Durham: http://www.dur.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/apply/entry-reqs/ (5 passes (grade C)in certificates including GCSE, Advanced, and Advanced subsidiary GCE level)

    In reality however the offers given for most courses are usually AAA, or sometimes higher (with the introduction of the starred A grade).

    The same is true for the vast majority of Universities.
    While their "minimum entry requirements" may be those of the UoL, as with all UoL institutions, actual entry requirements and specifically offers will be those listed as "typical grades", as is the case with most universities.

    Reply
  9. Pablo K

    Hi Charlie,

    I hope you're right, and, all other things being equal, I assume that the New College would absolutely seek the brightest intake. However, particularly in light of Tim Bayne's apt comments about some of the language being deployed, we should perhaps not be too reassured. 'A very general guide' is not quite the same as 'average offer' or 'typical grade'. New College is obviously in unfair position, since this is its first intake, but it is also promoting the general University of London minimum requirements much more prominently than most colleges seem to.

    If New College is not subject to entry requirements, it will want to take as £18,000 payers as possible. Many of the brightest rich kids will get into Oxford and Cambridge and other elite institutions anyway (where there are plenty enough informal advantages in play already). While I don't wholly endorse the view that New College will be for 'rejects' from these places (some will surely want to come for the specific Professors and educational experience currently advertised), it doesn't seem a stretch to envision that there might be a case for focusing primarily on ability to pay over prior educational achievement, were a conflict to arise.

    And yes, this is speculation too, but legitimate speculation I think. We are, after all, talking about a private, for-profit institution. Without a fee cap, the logic is to maximise students to maximise returns. This is especially so in light of another worrying sign. Earlier, a tweet from the official New College account (http://twitter.com/#!/NewCollegeH/status/77426210140979200) suggesting that their students *will* be eligible for the government's preferential student loan scheme. If true (and there's no detail on what that means beyond New College's 'belief') this would mean public subsidy for payments to a private institution, which I think we should find objectionable.

    In any case, it's a fast-moving situation. On Professor Leiter's earlier comment re: speculations, the core claim that this will benefit the richest doesn't seem to merit the term 'speculation' to me. The fees are announced at £18,000. The New College itself says that forms of financial aid will only be available to 20% of entrants. Even assuming that all of them get full fees reimbursed and a grant (and I've seen nothing to indicate that), a total of £54,000 for a three-year humanities degree is self-evidently out of reach of all but the wealthiest (unless it is provided in part of whole through government loans, in which case we're back to it being a public subsidy for a private profit).

    The selling point for this enterprise is the esteemed Professoriate and the intimate teaching model. Perhaps it is speculation that this will actually give the students at New College an advantage over those in classes of 25 or higher once a week elsewhere (thanks to the almost total removal of teaching budgets for public universities). But that seems no more speculative than the suggestion that it will prompt a wholesale government rethink on university funding in the age of austerity. A.C. Grayling may have some access to power, but I don't even his capacities of reason and rhetoric are capable of that.

    Reply
  10. Shane J. Ralston

    My sense is that this new higher education institution would be an excellent training ground for future academics. Though I have similar reservations about the high cost of tuition and the likelihood that most students will come from wealthy families, I'd hope that some very ambitious students from moderate to low income groups would self-select and find a way to finance an excellent humanities education at this institution. I spent one term as an associate student at Magdalen College, Oxford University, and paid grossly inflated tuition (compared to fully matriculated Oxford students), but feel that the experience was well worth it, since it ultimately helped me make the decision to become a professor. And I'm not from a wealthy family.

    Reply
  11. David Silverman

    This makes me incredibly angry, and I am shocked that so many high profile (and in some cases allegedly left of centre) academics are lending support to this. Providing an elite education for vast fees that only the rich could afford is clearly unjust. It can only serve to exacerbate the situation where only students from well-off backgrounds feel comfortable studying subjects like philosophy, while others feel they have to take vocational courses likely to lead more directly to a job. Instead of admitting defeat and going down the private university route, academics in Britain should be hanging on and petitioning the government to fund humanities better. All this college is doing is encouraging the government to continue down the current route. And the fact it is a for-profit venture makes it even worse!

    Reply
  12. hatfieldgirl

    Where, exactly, is this institution? All the materials I have looked at, including there own website, merely say 'Bloomsbury'. At best there is the statement that accommodation has been 'block-booked' in student residences.

    But where are the lecture rooms, the tutorial rooms, the seminar rooms, the offices, the library?

    Reply
  13. David Silverman

    Incidentally, going by what Suzannah Lipscomb says (here: http://suzannahlipscomb.com/archives/category/blog), only some of the assisted places will involve 100% scholarships. The rest will be partial fee waivers, reducing fees to slightly over £7,000pa. There is no mention of help with living costs, only with fees.

    Reply
  14. Anon

    One thing that struck me as odd, and perhaps deserving of a bit of attention: a couple of articles (in the Guardian and the Telegraph) report that NCH has shareholders who will share in the profits.

    The exact model isn't very clear (a quick scout around the NCH website didn't turn anything up). But am I right in thinking that this would be rather different from the standard U.S. model (perhaps U.S. readers can help)? Aren't most private universities in the U.S. (serious private universities, with serious academic standards) charitable institutions? They often make money, of course, but as I understand it they don't distribute it to shareholders. Their income gets ploughed back into the running of the university, or into other educational projects consistent with their charitable mission.

    BL COMMENT: That is correct: legally, all the elite private universities are "not for profit" institutions.

    Reply
  15. Michael Rutter

    Certain claims made by NCH seem odd. They claim, at least according to the guardian article, that all students should expect 12-13 contact hours per week, which is pretty high for humanities subjects in the UK. That workload cannot possibly be covered by the 14 star staff members that they list. Most of those contact hours will likely be lectures rather than seminars and tutorials, and mostly taught by an army of GTAs and unknown junior staff. In addition, most of the star names will still have obligations elsewhere or are at retirement age, which makes the list seem like PR.

    Course structure for the philosophy course seems a little odd. The first two years seem like an extended first year programme common in most UK undergraduate programmes. No Philosophy of Mind, Language, metaphysics, or history of philosophy beyond Hume until the final year.

    It is not obvious what they are selling, and the for-profit nature doesn't bold too well as commented upon above. It just doesn't seem terribly clear why someone would want to pay 18k without government support(loans and grants) to go to NCH over the very good public universities in the UK with similar entrance requirements.

    However, I do very much like the mandatory logic, applied ethics, and science literacy modules for all subjects. This should be adopted by all universities.

    Reply
  16. Michel-Antoine Xhignesse

    I don't have anything like the insightful comments and important questions raised above (many thanks to the posters above, by the way), but I think it worthwhile to point out that the gender balance seems a little askew, at least so far as the people who are confirmed to be on board are concerned: 3/17 are women (1/14 full professors, 2/3 convenors; law, economics, English lit., and 'diploma subjects' [basic science?] get no women, and philosophy gets just one female convenor). And as far as I can tell (based on the admittedly rather limited means of looking at bios and pictures), Dr. Dasgupta is the only non-white faculty member so far.

    Whatever else we may think of the NCHUM, it may be worth our while to make sure that they're (and we're!) aware of these imbalances. At the very least, the glaring absence of women seems problematic to me.

    Reply
  17. Jamie Dreier

    The American private colleges and universities that everyone has heard of never 'make money' in any interesting sense. They raise funds from donations constantly both to build an endowment (which then provides operating funds) and for ordinary annual expenditures, and without that philanthropy they would lose money hand over fist. Tuition, which as Brian notes is typically a lot higher than £18,000, doesn't come close to paying the actual costs of a student at, say, Pomona College (or Brown University).

    For-profit higher education does not seem like a good idea at all. The only such institutions we have in the US are "University of Phoenix" and I guess some imitators maybe. These are an educational disaster, as far as I've seen.

    Reply
  18. Pablo K

    My understanding (merely from tweeted replies to queries from people who know their stuff and from the various claims and counter-claims involving New College themselves) is currently as follows (and these are just provisional answers):

    1. No private institute would be entitled to government-subsidised loans to cover the whole of the fees. They may be entitled to loans up to the same baseline as public universities. Apparently this is what happens currently at the University of Buckingham. In the case of New College, this appears to mean that up to £6,000 of the fees could be given in up-front loans paid back on the standard government-run scheme (it may be £9,000 but that's conditional to access rules imposed by the government, so who knows how/if New College would qualify). This appears to mean that a section of the fees would be given in loans and the rest up-front.

    2. The report that most of the Professors are also share-holders came originally from The Sunday Times and is pay-walled (http://www.timesplus.co.uk/sto/?login=false&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesundaytimes.co.uk%2Fsto%2Fnews%2Fuk_news%2FEducation%2Farticle641692.ece ). The exact quote was: "Those who have provided the college's start-up funds of up to £10m include a multi-millionaire Swiss couple, several City financiers, Grayling and the professors themselves, almost all of whom have bought shares in it."

    3. The New College reports (http://twitter.com/#!/NewCollegeH/status/77361234298683392 ) that no PhD students will teach and that "all our tutors will have PhDs or equivalent experience" (they don't currently plan to offer graduate study, as mentioned by Mary Beard).

    4. In reply to Hatfield girl, current signs are that it has been granted college status of some kind within the University of London (most prominent London 'universities' – LSE, UCL, Kings, Birkbeck, Queen Mary, SOAS – are technically colleges of the University of London too) and A.C. Grayling's reply to some early official correspondence (http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/critlegthinking/~jlZDP ) indicates that New College has an arrangement with the University of London for student services too. My guess would be that they are either renting rooms from established colleges for their lectures and/or renting other private spaces.

    Reply
  19. Brian Leiter

    The comparison to U of Phoenix may be a bit misleading (though I certainly agree it's a disaster!). U of Phoenix targets older students and part-time students already in the workforce. It does not, to my knowledge, subsidize any students. It does not emphasize core humanities subjects, though it does offer them. And it does not promise, or deliver, a very good student-faculty ratio. NCH is different on all these fronts, or at least represents itself to be different. In particular, as many critics have already pointed out, NCH will quite clearly enroll a lot of 'rich kids,' using some of that revenue to subsidize strong students who aren't rich (it remains to be seen what the proportions will be). The question remains whether the for-profit model will push NCH to abandon some of its genuinely admirable intellectual ambitions.

    And let me add that while elite private universities in the U.S. are legally "not for profit," that means only that they do not try to deliver profits to shareholders. In many other respects, they are indistinguishable from profit-seeking enterprises, as they must be given that they operate in a marketplace for faculty and students and 'prestige.'

    Reply
  20. Jamie Dreier

    Brian, I don't agree — private universities in America compete for prestige and students only in the same way that public ones do. The profit motive is very different.

    Obviously NCH does not resemble the U. of Phoenix; I'm just saying that the history of for-profit education does not fill one with hope for this new venture.

    BL COMMENT: We agree on the second point. On the first, elite publics, like elite privates are technically "not for profit," but in every other respect participate in the marketplace for faculty, students, and prestige. It is true that trying to maximize the latter is less likely to undermine core academic purposes than maximizing profit, but it would be a mistake, I think to overestimate the differences. (U of Phoenix does not compete for faculty or prestige, and it doesn't compete for students with the elite universities that do.)

    Reply
  21. Anita Bernstein

    Lawyer reaction: The Guardian story (linked by BL) says that New College "is set up to deliver a profit to its shareholders." The New College website, however, says that New College Humanities Trust is a registered charity. There's no mention of earnings. Could someone here clarify whether a UK registered charity may generate returns, i.e. profits, to investors? I would have thought not. Took a look at the Charities Act 1993, which also seems to say not. Maybe Grayling has done something with the corporate form(s) of New College?

    Reply
  22. neil

    Brian's support of this enterprise is sensible only if we accept that, as he says, the battle against neoliberalism is already lost. He may be right that it is lost: it will be difficult to a Labor government to alter the facts on the ground if – and that is a big if – it returns to power in 4 years (if Scotland leaves the union, England may become a permanent Tory state). But acquiescing in developments like this seems to make the prediction more likely. In Australia, successive governments supported the expansion of private schooling, with the result that public money is increasingly spent on the education of the wealthy. The private schools justify this on the grounds that they take pressure off the public system, and note that they provide scholarships to those who cannot afford their exorbitant fees. This has led to a two-tier education system, in which the great majority of those who cannot afford private school fees go to the woefully underfunded public system, and has led to a vicious circle in which middle-class parents feel an increasing pressure to educate their children privately if they can. I fear that this enterprise may lead to the same kinds of developments in England. As Pablo notes, it is not in fact a private university: it is using the facilities of state-funded universities, and therefore represents a public subsidy being paid to the most wealthy.

    We should understand the scholarship system as PR, not as the point of the enterprise. Moreover, we should not regard 'talent' as a given, with the main question being how should we ensure that talented people have access to higher education, regardless of ability to pay. If we allow it to be (and to an unconscionable extent we already do) ability to pay can be a very good proxy for talent, since ability to pay is such a good predictor of everything needed to develop talent. We should be spending resources so that everyone has good access to what is needed to develop talent, like rich and stimulating environments. In the neo-liberal utopia, we can give scholarships to everyone who can't afford to pay who has the talent, and give very few scholarships. Enterprises like this help to realize that dream, I fear.

    Reply
  23. Jonathan Birch

    Note that, if the Guardian article is to be believed, the big name staff will be giving a combined total of 110 lectures a year. This surely amounts to a tiny fraction of the overall teaching load.

    Reply
  24. Ben

    The _Guardian_ story appears to confirm the suspicion, voiced by Tim Bayne and Michael Rutter, that the one-on-one tutorials will in fact not be taught by the star faculty: "Every student will have a one-to-one tutorial in their main subject each week in which they will be grilled on their latest essay, though these will not be conducted by the star names, but by a professional teaching staff that is currently being recruited."

    Reply
  25. Richard Baron

    I wish this venture well. More activity in the humanities is a good thing. And it is not as if activity will merely be re-distributed. There are plenty of able people who would like academic careers but who cannot find positions, and plenty of able students who cannot get onto their preferred courses.

    A lot of the fuss seems to be around financial arrangements. If I were the College, I would tackle this fuss by immediately publishing full details of:

    the structure of companies, trusts and any other entities, together with their memoranda and articles of association, trust deeds and the like;

    the ways in which money has flowed in from, and may in future flow in from or out to, investors, donors or whatever they may be;

    the financial deals that have been struck with the University of London, its colleges and any other publicly-funded entities, for the use of facilities or anything else, together with the amounts involved. To the extent that deals have not yet been struck, a statement of where the College has got to in the process should be published.

    Such transparency would kill off any suspicion that something fishy was going on. People might or might not like what they saw, but at least they could comment with the benefit of full information.

    Reply
  26. J Beswick

    As far as I can tell, there are two separate legal entities. The New College itself is a private company limited by shares set up by Grayling. Many of the directors have shares of between 3-4 K each. The New College Humanities Trust is distinct from that, and has been set up to manage studentships. So it seems that the college itself will be for-profit.

    Reply
  27. hatfieldgirl

    Thanks for the information Pablo K. There is a potential conflict here between this educational institution (or whatever it is, it seems to have a shadowy physical existence) and others in Bloomsbury.

    Most buildings here in Bloomsbury suitable for educational use either belong already to the University or are sought by the University when they come on the market. The pre-eminent educational need in Bloomsbury is for a secondary school south of the Euston Road (there is not one and the school students living here are scattered across Camden when they reach year 7, used to make up numbers in unpopular secondary schools miles from Bloomsbury, and maintain the effectively selective entry status of the Hampstead and Highgate schools.) The last thing needed is competition for a site (now that the Free Schools legislation has ended Camden's denial of a secondary school south of the Euston Road) with an adjunct to the University that seems to be offering what is already available in UCL, LSE, SOAS, King's etc. The Institute of Education is associated with the long effort to provide a local school for younger Bloomsbury students. Perhaps Professor Grayling and his fellows might like to slip next door from Birkbeck and liaise with IofE colleagues to ensure his project will not damage the educational interests and hopes of so many families and young Bloomsbury residents.

    Reply
  28. Tom Hepplewhite

    Doubtful whether profit could be returned to shareholders because of the Charity Act 2006. Basically a charity must be for the public benefit and this means it must be a benefit for a sufficient section of the public. Shareholders will certainly not meet this requirement. There can be a benefit to people who are not a sufficient section of the public but it must be only an incidental benefit which this is not.

    Reply
  29. Bill Wringe

    Anita – Daniel Davies post at Crooked Timber appears to have an answer to the charitable trust/profit-making organisation question: http://crookedtimber.org/2011/06/06/if-youre-an-egalitarian-how-come-youre-trying-to-sell-an-undergraduate-arts-degree-that-costs-more-than-an-mba/

    (Shorter Davies: it looks as though the scholarships are administered by a charitable trust; but the college itself seems to be a profit-makin orgnaisation)

    Reply
  30. Pablo K

    Anita,

    The answer seems to be that the College itself is a private limited company (search for New College of the Humanities at http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk) with a registered charitable organisation set up alongside specifically to provide the bursaries/financial aid.

    Reply
  31. Ofra

    I am not automatically opposed to private universities, assuming they are academically serious, and have excellent financial aid packages. But there are worrying signs that this particular initiative is not sufficiently serious. To point to just two worrying features:

    First, according to the Guardian articles linked above, “The big-name professors, who include Niall Ferguson and Linda Colley, will together give 110 lectures a year, which any paid-up student can attend.” Since there are 14 “big-name professors”, a quick calculation shows each of them will teach only 7.5 hours a year (!). We haven’t been told anything about who the remainder of the teaching staff will be, but so far this is hardly looking like the new Harvard.

    Second, what precisely is the relationship of NCH to the University of London? It sounds like they plan to award University of London degrees, which (if I’m not mistaken), are determined by centralised university-wide exams. If so, the NCH will not be able to control their curriculum, and there is a risk that what they are really offering is an expensive exam preparation service.

    Of course, many of the details are still unclear so we’ll have to wait and see.

    Reply
  32. Mike Otsuka

    In reply to a query 'why no science/maths' the New College of the Humanities tweets the following:

    "The aim of NCH is to protect excellent humanities provision – these subjects are under threat due to budget cuts."

    In his reply to the chair of the Birkbeck Student Union, Anthony Grayling writes:

    "But our society has chosen to pay for things other than the humanities and social sciences in higher education; it has turned over to universities the task of funding those subjects, and yet has done it in an unsustainable way because the true cost of educating to a very high standard is much greater than the fees universities will now charge."

    I find it striking, given this rationale, that NCH will teach none of the courses in the humanities and the social sciences that have been especially hard hit by the government's policies.

    These courses are the performing arts, architecture, archaeology, psychology, and 'non-strategic' modern languages, which cost more to teach than other courses in the humanities and social sciences.

    Rather than providing any courses in these areas, NCH will provide course in just philosophy, history, English, law, and economics.

    In the following respect, courses in the five subjects in which NCH has chosen to specialize have been made no worse off by government policy than any other course: With the exception of the hard-hit courses, if a university charges a £7,500 fee, it will end up receiving just as much money per student as it does under the existing arrangement of £3,300 fees plus T-grant subsidy.

    By contrast, the hard-hit courses will receive about £1,200 less per student than under existing arrangements. These courses will therefore need to charge nearly £9,000 to maintain current levels of funding, whereas fees above £7,500 will generate an increase in funding per student in all other courses.

    There is, however, the following distinct respect in which it has been claimed that the humanities will be adversely affected by government policy: it has been claimed that the rise in tuition fees to £9,000 will drive students away from the humanities and into courses that are perceived as giving one a more 'marketable' degree.

    I don't see how setting up a College that charges £18,000 fees for courses in philosophy, history, and English addresses this particular problem. (I set law and economics to one side, since they're perceived as 'marketable' degrees.) I realize that they plan to subsidize the fees of some students from poorer backgrounds. But so do Oxford and Cambridge. It remains to be seen whether the subsidies of the NCH will be more generous than Oxbridge's. On the Today programme this morning, Professor Grayling mentions that his stellar line-up of professors will be well-paid, and I wonder how much money will be left over for such subsidies after these professors have received their pay. (Oxbridge also has its star professor. But the bulk of their undergraduate teaching is provided by others who are less well paid.)

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  33. Mike Otsuka

    I'd like to make one thing clearer in my post above. I wrote:

    "With the exception of the hard-hit courses, if a university charges a £7,500 fee, it will end up receiving just as much money per student as it does under the existing arrangement of £3,300 fees plus T-grant subsidy."

    This claim applies to all courses across the arts, humanities, social, and hard sciences. In other words, apart from what I called the "hard-hit courses", no humanities or social sciences course has been disadvantaged relative to other courses, including those in the hard sciences.

    And I also meant to write, at the end of that post, that "Oxbridge has its star professors" — not that they share one star professor between them! Regarding the point I was trying to make there, perhaps, as others have noted in comments upthread that hadn't yet appeared when I posted, a significant amount of the teaching (e.g., the tutorials and the marking/grading) of the NCH undergraduates will be done by instructors who are much less well paid.

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  34. Alex Leibowitz

    I like the insistence that students will have a personal tutor and 30% student funding is a lofty goal. I am a bit disturbed however that high profile academics who are already employed (I gather?) at other institutions will be using their good names to advertise for this institution and justify the fees collected. This seems to me increasingly close not to intellectual sophistry rest assured but to sophistry in the sense of making money off of teaching. I hasten to add I hope there will always be people who can understand and explain difficult books and problems and that these will be clothed, fed, and cared for in sickness — but when people become even moderately wealthy from teaching, that worries me.

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  35. Christopher Morris

    I cannot comment on the details of the proposal as I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the state of the university system in the UK today. But I should like to say that it seems like a very bad idea to have a university system which is almost entirely funded by the state.

    I am surprised by the illiberal tone of some of the reactions to the proposal. Some find it unjust ("Providing an elite education for vast fees that only the rich could afford is clearly unjust."); others think it permissible only if a number of conditions are met. Appeals to liberty may not be very persuasive here, and this is not the place for a quarrel about freedom. But isn't it clear that dependence on one principal source of funding is not a promising way of organizing a healthy university system? It's worked better in the UK than elsewhere in the world. But it has obvious problems, and permitting a large variety of alternatives seems desirable.

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  36. Eric Rasmusen

    (1) The distinction between profit and non-profit can be a fine one. Many charities are in effect owned by the employees, and the profits are extracted not as dividends but as pay raises. A few years ago this was a legal problem for the Oxford colleges, I think, because their governing bodies are made up entirely of employees (the fellows), which is generally not allowed by charity law. I don't know what came of that.

    (2) Many of the comments are critical of the high tuition. If you're one of those commentors, how do you propose that a new college pay its bills? Or do you oppose the idea of having non-government colleges? I'm a director of a Christian primary school in my town. Our tuition is $5,000 higher than public school tuition (that is, our tuition is about $5,000 per child compared to $0!). That's tough for our median family, whose income is $60-100,000 (from a survey). But what can we do? Even that level of tuition only permits us to spend half as much per pupil as the state schools spend. Similarly, I question whether the New College will be very profitable. Either they'll run it to have high quality, and expenses will be high, or they'll run it to have low quality, and they won't attract students.

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  37. Alex Miller

    I can’t see anything of value in this proposal, and agree with Terry Eagleton’s take:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/06/ac-graylings-new-private-univerity-is-odious
    Grayling is certainly a “foremost” academic in the sense that he’s always on the radio and the shelves in Waterstone’s are full of his popular philosophy books. I’m sure these are fine for what they are, but I doubt whether many academic philosophers in the UK or elsewhere regard him as a serious philosopher. In fact, when I published my review of his collected papers a few years ago at
    http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13325
    I received appreciative emails from many (very good) philosophers (far more than usual!).
    It’s a bit too soon to write off the resistance to the neoliberal trend in UK higher education: certainly some battles have been lost, but the most decisive engagements are yet to come.

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  38. Brian Leiter

    I'm glad Alex linked to Eagleton's polemic. And I think Alex and Neil have identified a main source of disagreement: namely, about the prospects of resisting neoliberalism. I guess I'm a pessimist that it can be resisted now or that it is at all meaningful to resist it piecemeal. To be sure egalitarian values are more robust in the UK than in the US, where we are already used to the fact of academics as commodities, not civil servants, who have their market price, and where just about everything, even healthcare, is allocated based on ability to pay. But even the UK never recovered from the rightward turn of Thatcher, though you folks have managed to keep mad Randians at bay. Your Labour Party under Tony Blair became the party of neoliberalism, and now the party putatively to their left has joined forces with the Tories to give us the de facto privatization of much of British higher education! Is not the writing on the wall? NCH is just the natural continuation of the elimination of 75% of government funding for higher education and 800% increases in tuition in the space of a few years. If the Brits can't even keep the Tories out of office, and if their party of the Left is now in bed with the Neoliberals, it's really hard to see why one should think "petitioning" the government for more government funding for higher ed will produce any results. The battle to be won is at the polls, and NCH is just a symptom of the battle already lost.

    If that pessimistic view is correct (I'd be happy to be wrong), then one might ask whether anything salutary might come of these developments (even if, like all decent people, one hopes for the ultimate downfall of the capitalist class). First and foremost, NCH (and Buckingham and any other institutions that follow suit) may provide terms of employment for academics that are more like those found 30 years ago, when half of a faculty member's time was not devoted to "admin." I really find it hard to see how freeing faculty from the idiotic bureaucracy of British higher education can be a bad thing. Second, private universities may, as they have in the US, renew commitment to core intellectual disciplines. While there has been lots of coverage on this blog of the troubles afflicting philosophy departments at many state universities, at the same time elite private (and some elite public) universities in the US have actually been expanding the size of their philosophy departments. I'd be happier if NCH scrapped it's "business skills" course, which belies the high-minded humanistic rhetoric of the initiative. NCH may disappoint even in the areas where it might offer constructive competition to the quasi-state sector of higher education. But I do have the sense that much of the anger at NCH is displaced from its proper targets.

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  39. Tom Hepplewhite

    I struggle to see how the NCH is a bad thing. Sure lots of the students will be rich but if it didn't exist at all then the poorer students (who will be admitted under scholarships) may not be able to study at all. How can it be wrong to create more opportunity for HE?

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  40. Chris Bertram

    I'm struggling to see Brian's point about NCH freeing faculty from "admin". The self-regarding has-beens who make up the majority of the NCH "Professoriate" are hardly going to be freed, they are going to be jetting in from their other jobs or retirement homes. The peons who provide the bulk of the 1-to-1 teaching are likely to be kept quite busy too – no research career for them one suspects, just burnout after a few years for frustrated PhDs who didn't get a proper job elsewhere in a tight market.

    I'm not sure about the point about the battle against neoliberalism being lost either. But even if it were, I would hesitate to think that an appropriate employment for an egalitarian political philosopher would be in a finishing school aimed at those children of the super-rich who had failed to get into Oxbridge (or another top University). (On the other hand, the setup looks just made for Niall Ferguson.)

    BL COMMENT: Chris's assumption about the terms of employment of the so-called "peons" is mistaken. Some kinds of egalitarian political philosophers ought not work at such a place at NCH, that seems right.

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  41. Michael Kremer

    Just on the costs and the comparison to US liberal arts colleges:

    18,000 pounds is about $29,500. Whether this is far cheaper than a typical US liberal arts college depends on which colleges you are talking about. The cost of such a college varies enormously in this country. Further, much depends on what this figure includes (tuition, fees, room and board, books…?)

    Googling around, I find that tuition and fees at such colleges as Carleton, Grinnell, Swarthmore, Oberlin, etc seems to run around $39,000-$43,000 this coming year (exclusive of room and board, books and other expenses). Add in room and board and you're well over $50,000 at most places. But it is a commonplace that many students do not pay full tuition at such schools.

    And there are other US liberal arts colleges which are less expensive, some a lot less expensive. Here are a few examples I found, which are all more or less comparable in price to the proposed British college (I've rounded to the nearest $1,000):

    St Mary's College, South Bend, IN: $32,000 tuition and fees.

    Hope College, Holland, MI: $27,000 tuition and fees.

    Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN: $32,000 tuition and fees

    Spelman College, Atlanta, GA: $23,000 tuition and fees.

    Wofford College, Spartanburg, SC: $33,000 tuition and fees.

    Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, AL: $28,000.

    These are all listed in the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the US according to US News and World Report, for what it's worth. Go below that and you can find cheaper private, liberal arts colleges.

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  42. dsquared

    Just with respect to Chris's remarks on the lower-ranking academics and their admin burden, we need to be clear that this isn't an independent degree-granting institution that's being created here – that would be too difficult and expensive. Grayling's Hall is basically providing a "white label" degree. The University of London has an "International Program" under which it franchises its degree syllabuses and exams to a variety of international universities. What is going to happen is that the students are signed up to the external student degrees as individuals, and then NCH effectively tutors them to pass the exams. I cannot see how this is possibly going to reduce the burden of administration as it pretty much double-layers the NCH and UoL admin systems on top of each other.

    The only way, I suppose, that the admin burden on the lower-ranking faculty will be lessened is that because they aren't going to be given time or credit for doing research, they won't have the overhead of the Research Assessment Exercise. But I doubt anyone will thank you for that.

    BL COMMENT: I hope readers can distinguish between the facts and the speculation in comments like these (this comes from Daniel Davies, whose more extensive remarks at the Crooked Timber blog are linked, above). There will be no RAE, no absurd paperwork for the "quality teaching assessment," and so on. Claims about administrative burdens on 'lower-ranking faculty' are just rank speculation, based on no actual evidence. Perhaps they will be borne out, perhaps not, but there is no reason that the fact that NCH students will get a U of London degree should increase their administrative burden. There are enough actual facts in the public domain, why not keep the focus on these?

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  43. David Silverman

    The problem is that there is not enough funding being given to provide high quality higher education in subjects like philosophy regardless of ability to pay. People are talking about NCH like it's some kind of solution, but it's an answer to the wrong problem: all it's going to provide, for the vast majority of its intake, is an extremely expensive education, available to those who have loads of money to spend on it. Some, like Grayling, may feel the need to flee state education like rats from a sinking ship, but if that's the case, I would prefer they went to America where this sort of culture already exists. I would also prefer it if liberal professors did not hand the Eton-educated likes of David Cameron exactly what they want, the ability to buy private, elite educations for their over-privileged kids, while letting everyone else rot. State education does not seem particularly dead to me, but if it is dying, the NCH will only make the process happen faster, while providing a lifeboat for the most part only to the rich.

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  44. neil

    It seems to me that Brian's point about separating facts from speculation point cuts both ways. Brian is – reasonably enough – supporting this initiative on the basis of some informed speculation about how it might play out. Dsquared and others are opposing the initiative on the basis of their informed speculation about how it might play out. Insofar as we are forming opinions now, while information is scanty, this is unavoidable. Since agnosticism is one view among others, not the absence of a view, we can't wait until more is known before we form an opinion (let's hope though that all sides have the epistemic humility to update their views once more is known).

    BL COMMENT: My hope that NCH succeeds is based on no speculation at all, just on the facts about what has happened to UK higher education in the last 30 years and what is actually known about the current proposal. I have said repeatedly that things may not play out as presently represented, and that would, of course, change any rational person's appraisal. But right now the anger directed at NCH has very little to do with fact about NCH, and quite a lot to do with the desperate situation for higher education in Britain and the triumph of Neoliberal policies there.

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  45. Robert Stevens

    (i) It is very important to stress that this institution will not be part of the University of London. It will be offering private tuition to enable someone to take the University of London External exams, as many other private institutions around the world already do. Unlike other independent institutions offering such private tuition, it has no quality recognition from the University of London.

    See here

    http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/media/press_releases/new_college_humanities.shtml

    Students wishing to use University of London facilities will have to pay, just like any other external student.

    (ii) Considering how little teaching the Big Names will actually be doing, it would be prudent for any prospective student to check out the academic staff they will actually encounter.

    See here

    http://www.nchum.org/who-we-are/subject-conveners-and-other-teaching-staff

    Looking at the Big Names I know personally, I would be surprised if students see them very much.

    I suspect that their model will be to have convenors who then buy in the teaching on an ad hoc basis.

    (iii) A University education is unusual in being pretty much the only human good the quality of which is not allocated to the person prepared to pay the most. If you want better or the best food, housing, art, secondary education, sex(?), healthcare, or access to justice, if you can pay you will get it. A University education cannot be bought, at least not in the same way. Even this institution will not just be letting in those prepared to pay the most. Should Higher Education be treated differently from Secondary Education where we tolerate private schools?

    These students will not be receiving teaching at a University, of course. This is not a private University, like the University of Buckingham or American equivalents.

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  46. hatfieldgirl

    Is this the London degree these students will obtain? Not at all the same thing as an internal London degree.

    "A designated constituent institution of the University of London, called the "lead college", creates materials to allow students to study at their own pace. Examinations take place at testing centres around the world on specified dates. Hallmarks of the programme are its low cost in comparison to attendance in London, and the possibility of pursuing either full-time or part-time study.

    As stated in the University of London Statutes,[9] International Programmes students are graded on the same standard as internal students to ensure a uniform credentialing process.[10] A student who completes a course of study under the program is awarded a University of London degree with a notation specifying which lead college provided the instruction.

    Students enrolled in the University of London International Programmes are members of the University of London. International Programmes Students are however not full members of University of London Union and have very limited student representation within the University. There are also differences over the status International Programmes Students have with respect to their lead college. Some institutions co-register their International Programmes Students as college members (i.e. SOAS, LSHTM), in addition to their status as University of London member. However, other colleges deny International Programmes Students membership status and privileges when they are present in London (i.e. LSE)." (Wikipedia)

    If so, to charge £18,000 a year for tuition alone seems to undermine the aims of the UofL international programme. The fact that there is limited access to ULU and to the intellectual resources of major constituent colleges undermines the claim that the educational environment will match that of Oxford or Cambridge. A tutorial does not a college make.

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  47. Robert Stevens

    For a list of the (hundreds of?) institutions which are actually recognised by the University of London as offering teaching on its International Programmes, see here

    http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/onlinesearch/institutions/index.jsp

    Brian, the link to the Guardian you provide is misleading as it describes this institution as a 'University', which it is not. The standards of the Guardian newspaper are not high in my experience.

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  48. Tim Bayne

    Brian – part of the problem is that not a great deal is actually known about the current proposal, and thus one is not quite sure what is would be for NCH to succeed. From what we have seen thus far, the actual proposal is really quite different from that which is suggested by the newspaper headlines (not to mention the NCH's own publicity).

    As best I can tell, there are two ways in which this might develop. On the one hand, it might turn out that NCH ("Grayling Hall", as it has been dubbed) is just a very expensive prep school for students sitting the University of London's external degree. As such, it's hard to imagine that it will attract anyone who has a hope of a place at any ordinary university any time soon. If this is what it would be for NCH to succeed then I wish it well, but I do find it a bit difficult to see why a number of left-leaning senior members of our profession are throwing their weight behind it. Surely, one might think, there are better ways in which they might foster Humanities education in the UK.

    On the other hand, it might turn out that in the fullness of time NCH become a degree-awarding institution that is seen by prospective students (and their prospective employees) to rival the best UK Universities. This is certainly the picture that the headlines have painted, and one presumes that it's what the Master of Grayling Hall himself hopes for. Such a result would be great for the 160 rich kids and the 40 not-so-rich kids that it would educate each year, but the knock-on effects might be rather more problematic. Until very recently, there were few financial disincentives for working class students who were considering applying to a good University. Now that the fees are going up to £9k per annum (from £3k) this is most certainly no longer the case. (£9k might not look all that high to US readers, but it is high by (e.g.) European and Australasian standards and, perhaps more importantly, families have not been expecting a 300% increase in costs.) It seems reasonable to assume that if NCH establishes itself as a sought-after destination for undergraduates then that will put pressure on good universities to raise (in fact, double) their fees (either by going private or to lobbying the government to have the fees cap raised). And that, I fear, will lead to a further exacerbation of the degree to which the post-code into which one is born will determine the educational opportunities to which one has access. So from this perspective I'm equally puzzled as to why a number of left-leaning senior members of our profession appear to be throwing their weight behind this project.

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  49. Professor A. C. Grayling

    Brian – might I comment on some of what has been said in your thread here? – mainly to clarify misunderstandings. The subjects being offered by NCH will be history, literature, philosophy, law and economics just to start with, but adding politics, international relations, sociology, psychology, classics, art history and languages in due course. (I think it is right to marry the social sciences to the humanities: this is an institution about human experience, the human condition and society, and all these perspectives are mutually necessary and enriching.) In due time too we will add postgraduate programmes. We are starting small and growing slowly in order to maintain the standards of teaching that are central to the College's aims.

    The College has been founded on an investment basis (over a third of it is owned by the profs who have set it up, along with a spread of interested individuals who see the point and wish to support its aims over the long term) rather than a charity because it would have been a long haul indeed, and a precarious one, to go that route: but we have set up a charitable foundation alongside because our aim is to have over 30% of students on financial assistance ranging from free (scholarships) to the lowest average of publicly funded university fees (about £7000 pa). The full fee looks high in comparison to the UK public university fee cap of £9000, but this latter is unrealistic, & therefore temporary – it won't because it simply can't last long, is so restricting that it is threatening swathes of humanities provision, and has already obliged everyone to think radically about how high quality higher education in the humanities and social sciences can be preserved. –

    My own view is that a mature society should invest fully in education at all levels as a social good and an economic imperative, paying for it without stint from the public purse. All the main political parties in the UK now think quite otherwise. They have made the decision to spend buckets of money on other things – including rapid deficit reduction: highly questionably – and not on universities. That leaves an already struggling higher education sector in greater difficulty yet. The options, broadly speaking, are to complain and break windows, or do something imaginative about getting at least part of higher education out of (this kind of unimaginative and cheapness-minded) political control. Working to preserve standards while maintaining accessibility is the key: let's hope the publicly-funded universities survive and flourish, but let's not close the door for knee-jerk reasons to other experiments in opposing the attrition of study in the humanities. –

    Given the horrendous situation UK university education is in, it might turn out that NCH is the only institution educating some of the brightest school-leavers from the state sector for free, because we have brought resources into the endeavour from quarters not subject to caps, restrictions and red-tape. I'm a lifelong progressive (as we learn must be said in the US context now because 'liberal' has become a no-speak word there), but not so doctrinaire as to think that if we cannot have the cost of higher education borne by the collective, we can't have it at all. As a junior member at Oxford I benefitted from intensive tutorial teaching together with the opportunity to hear outstanding scholars in fields other than my own: that was a rich part of the experience, and NCH is structured to reprise it – but more personally and directly given the scale. – It's key to note that the idea is a marriage of the in-depth Oxbridge tutorial model with the breadth offered by the liberal arts model, this provided by the compulsory core studies in logic and critical thinking, science literacy and applied ethics which are additional to the degree modules and greatly expand the demand on students. The idea of adding (also compulsory) professional skills for post-graduation employability is a response to the many years of complaints in Graduate Employers' Association annual reports on the preparedness of graduates for the world of work, given that although our main aim is the intellectual enrichment that comes from higher study, there is the practical point that achieving successful careers is part of the good and fulfilling life at which education aims more generally. Combine all the elements of what we’re aiming to do, add the true cost of being determined to do it extremely well, add further the determination to have as many students on financial support as possible (as at major US institutions), and most of the criticism that has been leveled at us by some is I think answered.
    All best – Anthony Grayling

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  50. John Gardner

    Rumours of the death, or even the decline, of UK Higher Education are much exaggerated. Some here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians are messing about with the funding model again. Some here-today, gone-tomorrow TV dons are messing about in a vaguely farcical response. Yet again, the net amount of public money spent on the system as a whole is going to go up, to no good effect, and the TV dons react by charging extra to the punters, to no good effect. The BBC could make quite a good comedy show about it. I'd call it 'Brain Drain' myself.

    The serious problem underlying the comedy is that we have too many universities and too many students, mostly borne of an earlier imperative (Tory) to massage the youth unemployment figures and then (Labour) to fuel regional economic development. Youngish HE institutions, fuelled by the vanity of their senior administrators, were pawns in all of this. Their rise to university status has added a long tail of mediocrity to an otherwise healthy beast – a beast which, apart from its tail, is pretty resilient in the face of even the stupidest public-policy fads. How adding yet another jumped-up proto-university vanity project is going to be part of the solution to the underlying problem is a mystery to me.

    As for the last 30 years, Brian: I'm no lover or RAEs and QAAs and FTEs and so on – a curse on them all – but you should have seen the state of the place in the 1970s. I thought my dad was a professional golfer because that's how he and some of his university colleagues spent most of their afternoons. Before you tell of the Thatcherite and post-Thatcherite woes (which I do not deny), you need to brush up on your Kingsley Amis, Tom Sharpe, David Lodge, and Malcolm Bradbury. Together they tell a story with a lot more nuance (and hilarity).

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