Voices of protest under the dreaming spires

The campaign will parallel a 300-strong movement of academics at the University of Cambridge, and is set to be established at a meeting at Worcester College, Oxford next week.

Bernard Sufrin, one of the Oxford academics organising the OuCHE! group, said that attendees at the meeting on 7 March would discuss what measures could be taken “to enable us to add our voices to the growing chorus of those with misgivings about the economics, logistics and politics of the higher education ‘revolution’”.

The emeritus Fellow and tutor in computation at Worcester College added: “We will also discuss what can be done in Oxford to persuade our council – many of whose members support our views – to speak more trenchantly about the dangers posed to the universities by the very rapid (and apparently badly modelled) changes in funding.”

The development comes as 681 “deeply concerned” Oxbridge academics signed an open letter to a national newspaper criticising the “breakneck speed” of the government’s changes to fees and funding.

The letter in The Independent calls for a public commission of inquiry to be set up to examine the changes, which the academics describe as an “extremely risky and irresponsible experiment”.

simon.baker@tsleducation.com