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UK HE News

@ukhenews.bsky.social

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Watching the slow-motion suicide of UK universities evolve into its next phase: fast-motion suicide.

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UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · Aug 15

Universities exist to produce scholarship that commercial interests would never create. That context made studying under those scholars valuable.

In the UK, universities have become proudly motivated entirely by commercial interests.

That was always going to be unsustainable.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 1d

Btw not enough people talk about how Cardiff VC is the ultimate example of failing upwards.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 1d

In reality, they will get honours

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 1d

Permanent exile for all UK HE senior management would be warranted.

21 Group @21group.bsky.social · 1d

Cardiff University's globalist ambitions under fire

Please send VC Wendy Larner, the Board of Trustees & Council members to Astana, Kazakhstan ... permanently

Also add Prof Patrick Minford, the right-wing economist who backed the poll tax & Brexit

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Cardiff University defends Kazakhstan campus amid concerns

Hundreds of students have started lectures at the new campus, which is 3,712 miles from Cardiff.

Reposted by UK HE News

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

What will the wind down of UK HE look like?

First, senior management, composed of the least savvy holdovers from the UUK's 'take the money and run' era, will conclude that research is a 'luxury' for unis and argue that teaching is the main source of 'real income'...

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

And, finally, with a lag, the international 'recruitment markets' will recognise the diminished value to a 'British education', especially with limited visa benefits, and shift to ample competing alternatives, undoing the financial foundation of even UK's 'elite' universities.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

Third, the onslaught of media and political messaging about degrees being no longer 'worth it' will be reinforced by the total disregard for research reputation and prestige in senior management strategy, killing what is left of the signalling value of degrees.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

Next, the focus will be on efficiency at all costs (to reputation), and mass redundancies will be followed by fixed-term and outsourced labour. Credible links to scholarship will be severed.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

What will the wind down of UK HE look like?

First, senior management, composed of the least savvy holdovers from the UUK's 'take the money and run' era, will conclude that research is a 'luxury' for unis and argue that teaching is the main source of 'real income'...

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

The current Government is allowing this to happen, but it is poised to be replaced by a Government that will accelerate the collapse to ensure it happens virtually overnight.

That is the range of HE debate in the UK: a slow collapse vs a quick collapse.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 2d

There seem to be academics and other staff who are still not fully acknowledging what is happening:

There is a catastrophic collapse for UK HE coming.

Every uni is doubling down on death spiral strategies (selling reputation for short term solvency).

Prepare accordingly.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 3d

Just remember the first rule of modern universities: the customer is always right!

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 4d

I think we’re really going to have to do a lot more of this. A massive deprogramming so that people can read more than ten words at a time without anxiety.

www.thetimes.com/uk/education...?

Universities teaching literature students how to cope with long novels

Critics blame GCSE English for deterring teenagers from the subject, describing the literature syllabus as boring and repetitive

www.thetimes.com

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 3d

Or, in the UK, PhD morons with the same inclination.

Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 4d

Hmm maybe handing the keys to universities over to MBA morons who admire rich people instead of knowledgeable people was a . . . bad idea

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

Along with the collapse of the UK HE sector, is the collapse of the potential for senior management to ever make a higher salary than they do right now, which is based on a fraudulent UUK/THE hype-driven valuation of their performance.

What incentive does that create as they manage the wind down?

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

Your university's marketing unit has spent the last decade distracting from the research reputation with hollow slogans and vague promises unrecognisable to anyone looking for a university to attend.

Now they are shocked students are no longer interested in the 'product'.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

In other words, business as usual until the bitter end

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

Across the UK HE sector, corrupt and incompetent VCs are delegating the winding down of their universities to the next layer of senior management filled with even less competent cronies.

They are meanwhile trying to protect themselves and their networks from the onslaught of redundancies.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

Perhaps letting the "marketing" department control academic web sites was not the best idea?

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 5d

Nearly 20 years in academia and I have never seen a library website interface redesign that was better than the older version, NEVER

Why is it always like this

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 4d

Perhaps the fact corrupt and incompetent Vice Chancellors (UUK) spent a decade loudly boasting that UK unis were now successful 'businesses' (to justify their pay rises) has something to do with this impression?

Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 5d

Just leaving this here, showing that educating overseas students is the only university activity that doesn‘t cost more to deliver than it brings in. Maintenance grants are very welcome, but the source of funding for them is not. They‘re making a broken funding model even more broken.

Chart showing that amongst educating overseas students, industry-funded research, government funding, charity funded research, and educating domestic students, only overseas students is profitable.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 6d

The only way UK and US higher education policy in 2025 could make sense is if it were discovered that both were being manipulated by their foreign adversaries.

For sure, the leadership of the Anglosphere is working hard to make itself irrelevant to the future.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 6d

Yes, and it will lead to those things because of corrupt and incompetent senior managers—for whom UUK advocates for continued personal enrichment.

VCs and their cronies created the UKHE house of cards.

The Government is merely blowing it down.

Jim Dickinson @jimdickinson.bsky.social · 6d

"'Handed us a tax': University grants could lead to job losses and course closures"

'Handed us a tax': University grants could lead to job losses and course closures

Funding maintenance grants via a tax on international students could trigger course closures and push institutions into deficit

Reposted by UK HE News

Dr Woodbury-Smith @kwhyphens.bsky.social · 9d

Can confirm

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 9d

If you doubt that the REF is ridiculous, just explain how the REF works to any academic outside the UK. This will universally elicit shock, laughter or both.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 9d

"Many Oxford postgraduates, to be frank, appear to only be there so that they can have Oxbridge credentials to advertise to future employers"

Um.... the secret's out, I guess

thecritic.co.uk/dont-fall-fo...

Don’t fall for the Oxbridge Master’s | Jonas Balkus | The Critic Magazine

Despite their unprecedented fall in the University League Tables, and concerns about their objective decline raised by commentators over the years, Oxford and Cambridge’s prestige appears undented.

thecritic.co.uk

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 9d

The 'graduate premium' resulted from universities passing on their reputations for scholarship to students who met their standards.

It will eventually disappear because university managers are rewarded for selling degrees and generally killing the reputation of their universities.

Reposted by UK HE News

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 9d

If you doubt that the REF is ridiculous, just explain how the REF works to any academic outside the UK. This will universally elicit shock, laughter or both.

UK HE News @ukhenews.bsky.social · 9d

If you doubt that the REF is ridiculous, just explain how the REF works to any academic outside the UK. This will universally elicit shock, laughter or both.