Hope in short supply as election looms

They don’t happen often, but just occasionally Times Higher Education makes mistakes.

One that sticks in the mind, not because of the error itself but because of the way it was dealt with, involved a short news report on a debate in 2015, in which Lord John Patten, a former Conservative education secretary, had opined about Rhodes Must Fall protests in Oxford.

The article incorrectly attributed the comments to Lord Patten of Barnes – that is, Chris Patten, who as chancellor of the University of Oxford had rather a lot of skin in that particular game.

When such errors occur the response is often a complaint from a communications director, occasionally from a law firm. Not so in this case: the Oxford chancellor simply picked up the phone and asked personally for the mistake to be corrected.

From someone so eminent – a former governor of Hong Kong and chairman of both the BBC and Conservative Party – it was an understated approach, and in contrast to the performative and confrontational communications strategies pursued by many politicians today.

I mention it because, in an interview with THE this week, Lord Patten describes himself as having been “chairman of the Conservative Party when there was one”, signalling what one might interpret as despair at the state of the current government.

Among the frustrations for someone who understands the value of higher education and research is the funding cul-de-sac facing universities.

“If we’re going to continue to be a world power in research and innovation and universities – as the government says it wants to be – we are going to have to have more support,” he says.

He suggests that the only way out of the current predicament is a cross-party approach to the problem, but he warns that there is little to encourage optimism that this can be achieved.

He also expresses frustration with politicians’ willingness to harness the culture wars to appeal to certain factions of their party or the electorate at the expense of the “generosity of spirit” which typified his own approach to politics (and to correcting the occasional editorial error).

As Lord Patten prepares to depart from his Oxford role, the Conservative Party he used to chair is, polls suggest, preparing to depart from government, with Labour waiting in the wings.

No one talking to the Labour team at present is emerging with much hope for significant changes in policy direction for higher education after a potential Labour win.

Mainly, it is said, that is because there are so many competing – and politically more pressing – priorities for public investment; put more bluntly, it is because “there is no money”.

But it has to be acknowledged that it is also because a Labour government would inherit a country with real, and it seems deeply held, doubts about what higher education’s role, shape and size should be, and whether it is currently providing what the country needs.

This is a daunting set of headwinds for a sector that might, in normal circumstances, feel some optimism that a general election would provide the reset needed to resolve current challenges.

As a result, while there may be some small rabbits to be produced from undersized hats – something on maintenance grants, perhaps – there is little sense among higher education’s chattering classes that England’s tuition fee freeze is about to thaw, and real concern that the graduate visa route may be up for review regardless of who is in power.

What shadow ministers do seem to be offering is an end to the “talking down” of higher education, including as an international export underpinning universities’ financial viability.

At face value, this does not seem like much: an offer to replace a boot on the neck with some boosterism about higher education seems the very least an incoming government could do.

But perhaps that is to dismiss such a shift too lightly, or to underestimate how risky waiting for a government-led solution to higher education’s challenges might be.

As one sector leader put it recently: “In the past I have worried that we haven’t explained the issues we face well enough. But what concerns me now is that we have explained the problem so well that the politicians will come and do something about it. We need to find solutions before we get to that point.”

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com