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Going private will lead to students buying places through privilege instead of merit
Simon Jenkins highlighted the "absurdity of the coalition's so-called fees policy", but then argued that the only sensible way for British universities to oppose government plans is to go private (Our universities must now declare their independence, 30 March).
Jenkins, who believes that Oxford University should "make the first move" towards such a privatised system, thinks that private universities would have the benefit of being able to "organise and fund their own scholarships" for poorer students. As an Oxford lecturer in medicine, I believe such a course of action would be disastrous for both teaching and research in British universities.
Jenkins's model is essentially that of the US Ivy League, which includes Harvard and Yale. At such universities huge fees, averaging £28,000 a year, and donations by wealthy individuals bankroll a substantial number of scholarships for poorer students.
This might seem an attractive system in that rich students pay huge sums because they can afford to do so, and poorer students can still get an education at some of the greatest universities in the world. Yet in his book The Price of Admission, Daniel Golden of the Wall Street Journal claimed that "at least one-third of the students at elite universities, and at least half at liberal arts colleges, are flagged for preferential treatment in the admissions process".
Oxford and other top British universities already admit disproportionately high numbers of students from private schools, whose wealth of resources and small class sizes undoubtedly give an advantage over state-school applicants. Do we really want a situation where students, who have not made the grade despite such a privileged upbringing, can nevertheless still buy a place at our best universities?
Ultimately, confronting the argument that British universities should go private, or charge higher fees, means academics themselves reasserting their importance to society. A recent report, The impact of universities on the UK economy, estimated that British universities contribute at least £60bn annually to the economy – which compares favourably to the finance industry.
But there is a danger in only assessing our impact in economic terms. Jenkins believes that privatised British universities could "sell their research in the marketplace". This view is naive in its assumption that fundamental discoveries in both the arts and sciences should be primarily valued according to their saleability. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries in biology in the 20th century, such as the structure of DNA or proteins, were pursued by scientists primarily fascinated by understanding the fabric of nature, not by what money they might gain. And how can money be used to assess a valuable new insight into Shakespeare as he wrote his plays, or the social changes that led to the first flowerings of democracy in Ancient Greece?
Rather than looking towards the false solution of privatisation, universities need proper public funding and an end to the madness of current government educational policies.
