Marketisation could undermine higher education innovation

The university sector in the United Kingdom is hugely diverse and that diversity is increasing rapidly. It is not just that devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has encouraged regional diversity but that institutional missions, modes of operation and methods of governance are so different. For some, universities are about creating and disseminating knowledge. For others, students are at the heart of everything they do and others are very directly reliant on tuition fees. Many for-profits, meanwhile, are about the bottom line. This diversity has important implications for policy-making. A policy that favours one kind of institution may severely disadvantage another. One might expect, bearing in mind the degree of diversity in the system, that policy-making at a national level would have sought to reintegrate the sector. But current policies seem designed to further diversify the sector and also to advantage some institutions at the expense of others.