| The pattern of higher education institutions has remained remarkably stable for half a century. The post-1992 universities were allowed to drop their "polytechnic" labels but are essentially the same places. A few new universities have been created, generally based on former colleges of education. Even fewer private institutions – charitable and for-profit – have joined the system.
So visitors from 1970 would still recognise the institutional landscape, although they might be bewildered by some of the name-changes. Compare that with local government or even the health service, let alone Whitehall, where restructure has followed restructure at a bewildering rate.
But is this stability a good or a bad thing? A good thing maybe because it has allowed fundamental changes to take place in the scale, mission and complexity of higher education within a familiar pattern of institutions. In contrast, permanent restructuring can sometimes leave the fundamentals unchanged, apart from the wasted energy consumed.
But it is still hard to believe that the pattern of institutions that evolved between 1955 and 1970 remains optimal now. To be fair, a few mergers – more accurately acquisitions – have taken place. But they have been on the fringe – except perhaps in Wales where more systematic efforts have been made to restructure what was clearly a dysfunctional system with too many small institutions.
Root-and-branch restructuring has been talked about – but never undertaken. Once the Higher Education Funding Council for England played with regional scenarios, involving some large-scale mergers, and tried to identify "cold spots" of poor provision – hence the University of Cumbria and Ipswich's University Campus Suffolk.
But two things have got in the way of serious restructuring. First, all institutions are autonomous corporations, whether or not they have royal charters. They cannot be merged or abolished at the stroke of a pen. So, when London Metropolitan University ran into trouble a few years ago, when it over-reported its student numbers and lost millions as a result, it survived – rightly because of its distinctive mission – when most of the higher education establishment wanted it closed.
Second, we have fallen in love with the "market" – well, not me but the same establishment. The hidden hand is now supposed to sort out winners and losers, and any restructuring will be done for us. Maybe not. Even if the phoney market created since 2010 does lead to threatened university closures, will politicians be able to go through with such moves when faced with local campaigns to keep them open?
As a result, universities are totally independent, or they do not exist. There is no middle way. And serious restructuring is almost impossible because it is stigmatised as "state planning". Short-term competition trumps long-term collaboration every time. In any case there are no tools or levers left to produce any significant shifts in the pattern of institutions, however desirable.
Even in the past, the UK has not been able to sustain multi-campus universities . The federal Victoria University in the north of England barely outlived Victoria's reign. The National University of Ireland, including Queen's, was wrecked by Irish independence. The University of Wales has in effect disappeared. The University of London is in its last days, mired in controversy about its allegedly philistine treatment of the Warburg Institute.
In contrast, many of the great American universities are federal institutions. Berkeley and UCLA benefit from being part of the wider University of California system. The University of Wisconsin at Madison is just one of several campuses spread across the state. So is Ann Arbor in Michigan. The State University of New York (Suny) is a veritable constellation of campuses.
That is how the Americans manage differentiation of mission – and, in particular, the balance between world-class research universities, often on gracious small-town campuses, and wider-access institutions, generally in inner cities. Successfully. We manage differentiation through divisive brand wars, class-bound hierarchies and dollops of condescension. Unsuccessfully.
Just imagine – a (federal) University of the North that could really challenge the golden triangle of Oxbridge and London in the soft south; or a University of London that had welcomed London's former polytechnics and, as a result, looked more like an English Suny than a Dickensian relic.
Not just higher education would benefit. With an eye to the imminent independence referendum in Scotland, powerful federal universities could become engines of English regionalism. Regions built round dynamic knowledge economies not antiquarian Anglo-Saxon labels that would make a far greater contribution to modernising the UK than wasted attempts to apply neoliberal ideology.
But let's not get carried away. Maybe it's better to stick to league tables and logos …
Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies, Institute of Education |