>It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you provide a service to the unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality. That's exactly what happened, and it

>It seems to me it is an elitist view that when you provide a service to the unwashed masses, it must be of lower quality. That's exactly what happened, and it pre-dates the Labour government's goal of 50% participation. The Further and Higher Education Act 1992 allowed polytechnics and colleges of further education to become universities. Many of these institutions had little or no research output and had previously been dedicated to vocational instruction. There was an immediate and lasting change in how universities operated. Many of these post-1992 universities had extremely lax entrance criteria, in some cases tantamount to an open-door policy. There was a proliferation of degree courses that were obviously vocational and obviously far less demanding than a traditional degree - Sports Science, Hospitality Management, Fashion and Textiles etc. There was another drop in standards with the introduction of tuition fees. Before 1998, university teaching was funded primarily through government grants, with students paying nothing. The Labour government introduced fees of £1,000 per year, which were increased to £3,000 in 2004 and to £9,000 by the Conservative government in 2010. These higher fees were ostensibly a maximum, with the intention that universities could compete on price. The structure of the student loan system meant that there was little practical difference for students if they were paying lower fees, so all universities charged the £9,000 maximum. This fundamentally changed the character of British universities, shifting them away from the European social model and towards the American market model. Less selective universities started to aggressively advertise to lower-performing school leavers, because there was no cap on student numbers and their income was directly tied to putting bums on seats. Universities had a strong incentive to promote humanities subjects over science subjects, because the former are much cheaper to teach. International students have become a hot commodity, because they pay higher fees than domestic students; many universities now offer fast-track schemes for international students, with lower entry requirements than for domestic students. This move towards a market-led university system has driven a huge increase in pay for senior management and a huge increase in the use of casual and part-time lecturers. As in the US, we're now seeing managers earning salaries in the high six figures, while peripatetic lecturers are struggling to earn a living wage. There was a huge wave of strikes at the start of this year over cuts to university staff pensions, followed by collective legal action from students demanding compensation for missed lectures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_universities_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_universities_(United_Kingd... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_tuition_fees_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_tuition_fees_in_th... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/06/universities-stopped-sidelining-british-students-foreign-teens/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/06/universitie...