What does the future hold?

The sad reality is that unless they are stopped, the ever-expanding faceless managers will destroy everything that was ever good about UK higher education.

That is the UK higher education that you, the UK taxpayer, pays for.

We see it already. As institutions race to make savings to save the bloated salaries of executive, they start to see academic staff salaries and research expenditure as 'costs' that are lost to a black hole. In their mind, there is no reason why teaching needs to be delivered by an expert lecturer with many years of experience. Why pay £55k per year for a lecturer, when you can take their lecture notes and give them to a freshly graduated PhD student on an insecure temporary contract? When that student gets fed up of no job security - hire another one. Easy!

This has already started - we are seeing serious academic jobs being devalued and advertised as hourly contracts in UK universities. Do you think that your fees should pay for a proper, experienced, expert academic - or the university equivalent of a supply teacher?

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