by John Holmwood, University of Nottingham The debate on the future of Higher Education in England (the separate devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland means that proposed reforms are different in each part of the UK) has hotted up with the publication of the Government’s White Paper: Putting Students at the Heart of [...]

Lucy Mayblin, University of Warwick Note: The UK Parliament will vote on 9th December to pass enabling legislation to allow a rise in student fees in England. This will then be followed by a White Paper making specific recommendations, which will also need to be voted upon (the normal process would have been to have [...]

John Holmwood, University of Nottingham When the architect of California’s system of public education, Clark Kerr wrote in the 1960s of the diverse character of the modern University (The Uses of the University, 1963), and the increasing significance of its contribution to the economy, he was widely criticised for discounting the traditional values of the [...]

James Vernon, University of California, Berkeley I graduated from the University of Manchester in 1987 with no debt. I paid no fees and received a maintenance grant to earn a degree in Politics and Modern History. If my seventeen year old son were to follow in my footsteps he would graduate with debts of at [...]

John Holmwood, University of Nottingham The privatization of higher education in England is now underway (the separate countries that make up the UK allows differences between them, but it is unlikely that Universities in Scotland and Wales could stand out against the developments in England). Currently, English Universities receive funding for undergraduate students from two [...]

By Sarah Amsler, Aston University Nowhere have the battle lines of neoliberal power in education been draw more clearly than in Middlesex University’s recent decision to close its renowned department of Philosophy. It is home to Radical Philosophy, boasts one of the largest MA philosophy programmes in the UK, was the university’s best performing research [...]

By Peter Hodgkinson, London Metropolitan University, U.K. One cannot help but be struck by the almost daily reminder that the worlds of finance and higher education are actually conjoined (‘Oxford University loses £100m in credit crunch’). Their fates appear to be inextricably linked, and never more so than in the current economic crisis. However, it [...]

 By John Holmwood, Nottingham University The history of Sociology at Birmingham University has been fraught.  A Department of Sociology was first set up in 1964, but was closed in 1986. The University set up a Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology in 1991 only to close that Department in 2002. In 2004 it re-established the Department [...]