A plan to shake up British universities meets opposition in the House of Lords

WHEN it was announced in 2010 that university tuition fees were to treble, to a maximum of 9,000 ($14,000) a year, 50,000 students took to the streets in protest. Now, as a new shake-up of higher education gets under way, the opposition comes from the dons. Chris Patten, Oxford University's chancellor, has described the government's higher-education bill as being worthy of Thomas Cromwell for its centralising of power in the hands of the state, and of Sir Philip Green, a tycoon best known for his role in the collapse of a chain of department stores, for its embrace of entrepreneurialism.The bill, currently before the House of Lords, is vast in its scope. Jo Johnson, the universities minister, aims to improve teaching quality, streamline funding and tidy haphazard regulation. Much of the controversy arises from plans to make life easier for new higher-education institutions, which include colleges providing vocational education for everyone from lawyers to chefs. The bill would speed up their access to degree-awarding powers and government funding, and align their regulation with that of universities.That worries Lady Wolf, a...Continue reading
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