State-sanctioned inequality

Your comprehensive coverage of the “wealth check” of UK higher education institutions highlights the blindingly obvious: namely, that there is increasing institutional inequality across the system (“Strength in numbers”, 11 April).

What it fails to highlight is that this inequality is driven by UK government policies that encourage and support the privatisation of the sector. The symptoms are becoming ever more glaring: sector-wide fragmentation, institutional stratification and professional atomisation.

What is required is an understanding of the underlying causes and, in light of that understanding, a commitment to maintaining higher education as a common good.

Jon Nixon
Senior research fellow
Hong Kong Institute of Education