Letter of Opposition to HE Green Paper
Dear Craig Calhoun and Mark Thomson,
We, some students of LSE, write in regards to the government’s recent Higher Education Green Paper. We would like to express our extreme concern for the impact it promises to have on higher education – a concern we believe is shared by students and academics from across the country, as well as all those who may yet wish to enter higher education. We write in the hope that LSE will fight for these concerns in its response to the government’s consultation.
We understand that government cuts mean universities will increasingly struggle to finance themselves. Consequently, we appreciate that LSE’s concern in the consultation may be to ensure the criteria of the “Teaching Excellence Framework” is such that will reflect positively on our university and allow LSE to benefit from the only financial alternative the government is providing – the ability to raise fees.
However, as students, we are concerned not only for our own education but for generations to come and higher education as a whole. We hope and expect LSE to reject the shift in the dialogue surrounding universities which this government has championed – a shift which sees higher education is discussed a s a “privilege” rather than a right, and spoken of in terms of “what employers want” and “value for money.” While this process may have started back with the reinstatement of tuition fees, and the Green Paper may be not the first but the last step in privatising higher education in the UK, we believe the fight is not already lost. Resigning to it, agreeing to play the proposed new system rather than calling it out, allows the government to get away with reforms which are not centred around students, but, instead, put the market at the heart of education and in the process deeply corrupt it. We recognise the Green Paper may hold positive material regarding matters of socioeconomic background and access to education. However, we implore LSE makes it its priority in the consultation to reject the very basis of the Green Paper that calls for the marketisation of higher education.
In addition, students from universities across the UK are looking to put together an open letter on this issue from senior academics, directed at Jo Johnson (attached below). We would like to appeal to you to lend your names to this endeavour.
As we are sure you understand, this is a matter of great urgency and would consequently like to request a meeting to coincide with the national day of action this Thursday, in which we hope to discuss our concerns, LSE’s planned response and the signing of this letter.
Thank you – yours sincerely,
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Open Letter to Jo Johnson Regarding the Recent Green Paper on Higher Education
We are senior academics and Vice Chancellors, writing to you to express our concerns around the Higher Education Green Paper; its contents and its effects on our institutions.
We take pride in the high standards and prestige of the UK Higher Education system, and UK institutions facilitate a global exchange of knowledge which puts us at the heart of the world’s skill exchange, with students and academics from across the world entering the system.
We are deeply concerned that your plans will jeopardise not only our place in the world but the very fabric of the UK public education system. We believe that education is a resolutely public good, and therefore it must be publicly funded. We are worried that the introduction of a Teaching Excellence Framework will not in fact drive up teaching standards when it is based on blunt instruments such as graduate employment data. This will not recognise the thousands of inspirational teaching staff who are already prepared to spend time with students and share their knowledge; it will simply reinforce the thought of good teaching as a gateway to employment rather than to a more rounded human, which is what a good university experience should lead to.
We are further concerned that this Paper centralises power to the hands of single QUANGOs or government ministers, whether on fee levels or quality assessment. We do not want to see further dilution of the voice of key stakeholders and the sector, namely students and academics, rather a system which truly would have students at its heart.
The approach to ‘failing’ institutions is also of great concern. Whilst we do not want to limit access to higher education, we also believe that the British system’s reputation and prestige will not withstand the proposed influx of private providers into the “marketplace.” We do not reject this market for fear of our own application rates, rather out of the will that all those who enter education should receive a high quality student experience - and private provision without checks and balances, which is allowed to exit and enter the market very swiftly, will not provide that. The apparent readiness to allow public-funded institutions to fail, on the assumption that private providers will take care of students abandoned whilst finishing their courses, is also deeply aggrieving: institutions, and the governments which fund them, have a duty of care towards their students which cannot and should not be privatised.
We believe that, if implemented in full, your set of recommendations will have a hugely detrimental effect on our education system, treating knowledge as a commodity which is produced and consumed rather than something which enriches. We believe that much of it is hasty and ill thought through, and it should be reconsidered with some urgency.
