British Academia is in a panic. The money is running out. As spelled out a long article in the London Review of Books:
Britain’s ‘world-leading’ university system is in deep trouble. There are, inevitably, conflicting diagnoses of the malady, but the indicators of deteriorating health are too ubiquitous to be ignored. When a substantial number of universities are in serious financial jeopardy, with some hinting at possible bankruptcy in the short term (according to the Office for Students, some 45 per cent of ‘higher education providers’ will face a deficit for 2025-26); when the viability of universities is heavily dependent on attracting large numbers of international students whose fees make up between a fifth and a third of their income and whose recruitment is vulnerable to the slightest twitch of governments’ anxieties about immigration; when nearly every week brings news of fresh closures of courses and redundancies among academics, especially in the humanities; when some of the subjects that have long been regarded as among the staple offerings of any university worthy of the name are now in danger of becoming extinct or confined to a handful of privileged institutions; when one in four UK physics departments are thought to be at risk of closure and when research council funding of the physical sciences may in some cases be reduced by as much as 30 per cent in proposals that are said to threaten ‘generational destruction’ in those fields Cont'd here
Universities, as today's students experience them, are being made increasingly redundant by the AI-connected internet. In the 12th Century, if you wanted to learn anything technical, historical or literary, you needed a human instructor. In that case you went to Paris, where there were scholars who made a living tutoring young aristocrats. In emulation, a similar academic world emerged in Oxford. From those beginnings blossomed a thousand universities.
But what need is there now for bricks and mortar institutions of higher education? Need to know something? Just ask Gemini or another AI and it will give you an outline. Need more details, the AI will oblige. True, the university method of education with periodic exams compels students to pay attention, but there are other ways of getting someone's attention -- like job interviews that are combined with knowledge tests.
Today, universities are defended by academics intent on protecting their comfortable life-style, and young people who feel entitled to three or four or five or six years of undergraduate social life. Some may say that unversities provide an opportunity for young people to learn at the direction of scholars. But that is no reason to fund expensive institutions of higher learning. If students want academic direction in a world without universities, independent academic advisors will no doubt emerge to fill that need.
So what does it matter if all the universities go bankrupt? It will save taxpayers cash that they can spend on self-education.
