Kmflett's Blog

Last orders for the Business University? From Warwick 1970 to 2026 redundancies & financial crisis

Hardly a week goes by without news of redundancies at a University and reports of financial crisis.

The UCU has called for Government action given that thousands of jobs and the education of many students is at risk

It reflects that latest stage of the Business University- a degree factory, where profit rather than learning is the bottom line.

I exist only on the margins of academia as the long-time convenor of the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London School of Advanced Study. Despite the fact that the Government goes on constantly about history, there isn’t much profit to be made out of studying it. The IHR in this context does a great job as the centre of UK research history.

As a socialist historian the current story reminds of a long history. It goes back to Warwick University in the late 1960s. At that point the late socialist historian E P Thompson held a senior  post there (not as a Professor- he hated them). When students discovered the links between the University and the local motor industry- which was really running the place- he collaborated with students to publish Warwick University Ltd. It was an expose of the Business University at its beginning and its only gone downhill, learning, research and study wise, since.

The 2024 General Election posed the question of whether a Labour Government might promote the labour’s movement’s long association with the quest for learning and knowledge. After all Keir Starmer has made much of his time at Leeds University.

I think perhaps the organised strength of the UCU provides a better hope for the future. 15,000 jobs were cut in higher education last year. UCU conference this week heard calls for co-ordinated strike action against compulsory redundancies