No serious academic only cites researchers from Russell Groups so that is nonsense. Offensive for those of us who routinely see our contribution dismissed but not unexpected given the assumed hierarchy in HE in the UK. I am a bit embarrassed I rose to it earlier in the thread.
I think part of the problem is we have not mounted a big enough defence of the value of research led teaching to the broader educational health of the country and nor have we even touched on academic service and value of that.
Instead it is all about return on investment for the individual student. This is also consistent with underlying philosophy of a move to fees and competition so that philosophy is what needs to be questioned rather than the performance of an individual institution. We shifted the cost of an educated society to the individual, that was a mistake.
Letting struggling universities fail without it being part of a wider, coherent plan about tertiary education in the UK would be a similar mistake and won't work. PPs have pointed out the incoherence of that in terms of geographical spread of provision. I'm a psychologist, psychology is so popular right now it is growing all over the place but the country does not need a glut of psychologists because that is what 18 year olds want to do so all other courses fold. Please can we acknowledge was madness it is to have the foundations of our knowledge economy decided in this way?
This conversation needs to be had with the honest recognition that the graduate premium is shrinking because we have had wage stagnation at most levels apart from increases in minimum wage so the gap is shrinking. University may well not be the best financial investment for an individual.
But is that all that matters? I'm not being glib here, I'm genuinely asking because that is the question we need to answer. If it is, then we should have a managed decline of our universities and pivot to technical colleges. Someone wrote about the automaton of technical skills earlier, well AI can automate many higher cognitive functions so why teach them?
What do people see as the value of universities to wider society beyond the financial?
It doesn't help that our union is not fit for purpose and at every institution I know (except the OU actually) seems to pick fights with management rather than seeing the bigger picture but that is probably another thread 😅