For most of the twentieth century, the purpose of universities was twofold: To enable suitably qualified persons to study in depth an academic subject in which they were interested, and to allow senior scholars the facilities to pursue research which would extend the boundaries of knowledge. Those, one might think, are sufficiently demanding and admirable aims. They are not good enough, however, for the politicians and business magnates who currently manage British universities, and are regarded as absurdly outdated and self-indulgent. What these people think universities are for is to increase our GNP and international competitiveness. All other considerations must give way to this.

Throughout the 1980s, universities had to cope with an expansion in student numbers combined with brutal cuts in government funding, but they somehow maintained the “top-down” model I just sketched. Then, in the 1990s, came two decisive changes. In 1992, the Polytechnics (institutions of higher education offering more vocational courses) were allowed to call themselves universities, doubling the number of “universities” overnight without effacing the real—and important—distinctions between the types of education available. This blurred the concept of university education in ways that were not always helpful. More damagingly, in 1998 the state grant, which had enabled undergraduates to study at minimal or no cost to their families, was replaced by the student loan which, upon graduation, students must repay over time. (It is estimated that someone who began a British university course in the Fall of 2011 will owe around £27,000 [more than