Britain’s leading thinkers are launching a new campaigning
body to protect the independence of universities as they face growing pressures
from government attempts to move towards a more free market higher education
system.
An array of academics and celebrated personalities have
joined up to form the Council for the Defence of British Universities including
Sir David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, former poet laureate Sir Andrew
Motion, Lord Bragg and Alan Bennett.
They are anxious to protect the independence of research,
arguing that academics should be free to work in fields regardless of whether
they brings their institution economic benefits.
They also argue that the Government’s higher education
reforms have ushered in “excessive inefficient and hugely wasteful “new
accountability measures”, adding: “The very purpose of the university is
grossly distorted by the attempt to create a market in higher education”.
In its mission statement, the new body, which will be
officially launched on Tuesday argues that - while there are many different
groups representing universities “no organisation exists to defend academic
values and the institutional arrangements best suited to fostering them”.
It adds that the tuition fee and competition reforms to
foster a freer market have been introduced “although opposed by student
protests, devastated by academic criticism and unsupported by even the most elementary
analysis of the empirical evidence”.
They argue that universities have become more dependent on
student fee income and contributions from donors as a result of the new fees
regime slashing government grants paid directly to universities.
They say they are fearful for the future of “one of the UK’s
greatest assets - its universities”, adding that “a long series of heavy-handed
reforms - driven by economic pressures and political objectives rather than the
needs of universities and students - have traduced its (the university
system’s) values”
The new council has 66 members - including eight members of
the Order of Merit, 17 peers.
Nobel prize winners, former vice-chancellors and
former Cabinet ministers. Historian Sir
Keith Thomas and eminent scientist Lord Martin Rees - presidents of the British
Association and Royal Society respectively have also signed up.
The launching of the new body coincides with a plea from
former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy for ministers to “take
seriously” the claims in a report which said there was an £1billion “black
hole” in the budgeting for the higher education reforms. It argued it had
over-estimated the income from repayments of student loans as well as
under-estimated the level of loans students would need to cover the cost of
their courses.
Source: 8 November 2012, The Independent by Richard Garner
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