There are certain perennial and perennially important issues that have arisen out of this recent history of British higher education. They are persistent dilemmas which, because they are so important, have to be included in any survey. They continue to crop up and none of them show any sign of going away soon. They are: the balance of public and private funding, student access, funding teaching, league tables, funding research, research integrity and autonomy (or the lack of it). Best to tackle them up front now and then move on to an analysis of why research universities now find themselves in such a problematic state and, latterly, what they can do about it.

Public or private?

It could be plausibly argued that British research universities are one of the few national institutions that cannot be classed as failing. If there was a fire sale of the assets of UK plc, they would come out near the top. They are only tangentially a part of the British post-imperial malaise that seems to linger on to infinity. Rather, they are part of an international system which visibly rewards success and is a harsh taskmaster when failure occurs. Their record of achievement is pretty good, whether it’s doing world-beating research, teaching students to a generally high standard, producing large amounts of export business, supplying industry with innovations, or even (though this can be a double-edged sword) becoming big business. Some research universities have a turnover over the £1 billion or even £2 billion mark. A number would be in the FTSE 250 by some measures. According to Corver (2019), for example, if universities were added to the main FTSE groupings on a competitive revenue basis, higher education would actually be the largest industrial sector. But they are not particularly high on the list of government priorities. Indeed, on a bad day, it can feel as though what scant attention is paid to them by government is focussed chiefly on their supposed failings in serving students. As Seldon (2018, p. 2) puts it: