Guest editorial: the end of the British public university?

The public university is one of the great institutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stemming from multiple roots, universities were places of opportunity, the generation of new knowledge and public intellectual life. They were based on a broad, often unarticulated concept of learning and knowledge as a public good. In the wake of the Second World War, universities in Europe and North America opened their gates to the middle classes, driving sustained economic growth. This is being repeated today across India and China, as the epicentre of the world economy shifts to Asia. While the public good has often been sustained by private contributions, whether through endowments, fees or contracted research, British universities have had an ethos of public accountability, and have been widely seen as civic institutions, alongside public libraries, cathedrals, art galleries and concert halls. This will now change. In accepting the principles of Lord Browne’s review of university funding and student finance, the UK’s coalition government will complete a process of privatization that began in the recommendations of Lord Dearing’s report of 1997. Most students – and all students in the social sciences, arts and humanities – will pay for the full cost of their education through a system of graduate contributions. In addition, the Coalition will propose, initially through a White Paper, opening up Higher Education to privately owned, for-profit corporations.