‘Universities left to fly blind’

Six hundred and eighty-one Oxford and Cambridge academics have published a letter in the Independent expressing ‘dismay and alarm that universities are being forced to take major decisions, with unknown consequences, at a breakneck speed.’ The reforms, they write, will have ‘random effects in the HE sector, depriving some courses of income streams, and decimating the funding for teaching in some institutions, without any coherent and publicly announced policy in regard to which of these institutions and courses the Government believes should be left to fail.’ The letter reiterates previous calls for a Public Commission of Inquiry into the future of Higher Education in the UK.