Ever since Kenneth Baker realised that it could be manipulated for purely political ends, education has been in turmoil.
By deciding that 50% of school leavers should have a university education, the Blair government created a situation in Higher Education that has become more and more unmanageable. My own view is that by encouraging young people to stay in education, the unemployment statistics became more favourable.
Since the end of WW2 the growth of the HE sector in the UK had been gradual and organic. The university colleges, providing London University degrees, became full universities (the "redbricks"), technological universities (eg Aston, Brunel) were established, regional colleges of technology evolved into polytechnics (but were not permitted to award their own degrees - students received them from a QUANGO - the CNAA).
Gradual and organic until 1992.
Polys served a very useful purpose - they demonstrated that technical education could be every bit as fulfilling and demanding - and a bloody sight more useful - as studying dead Mediterranean languages at Oxford - and wanted their own degree awarding powers.
In 1992 they were transformed into full universities - but many found themselves overshadowed by older universities in the same town, although some have since achieved a similar status to the older, established, university (eg Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham University). The 1992 Act which transformed the Polys also opened the floodgates for other educational establishments to seek university status - there are now about 160 institutions with university status. I spent nearly a quarter of a century working in an institution which, when I joined, was an FE college (the "Tech") and when I left was a university.
To finance this recent expansion, both Labour and Conservative governments had a wonderful, revolutionary wheeze - charge the students for their education. In a stroke, students ceased to be students - they became customers and started insisting as being treated as such. A further unforeseen consequence was that university managers suddenly saw themselves as operating in a commercial world - and, for some, it went to their heads. If the MD of a company with a turnover of £250 million can pay himself megabucks, said some Vice Chancellors, why can't I?
So, says the lacklustre, out-of-touch, Brexit obsessed, minority, directionless, lame-duck government whose existence now blesses the United Kingdom, we must "be doing something about it".
The real, tangible, manifest skill possessed by the administration of Theresa May is that of screwing things up - let it do its best.
