In case you missed it

For those of you not on academia.edu, or not following Richie Nimmo, here’s his open letter to Vince Cable.

Dear Dr Vince Cable,
I write to express my deep concern at the proposed reform of higher education funding, and to urge you to rethink your position and to vote against the proposals.
The cutting of university teaching budgets by almost 80% – deeper than any of the other proposed cuts – and the removal of all public funding for university teaching in the arts, humanities and social sciences, is a powerfully regressive move on any sane analysis. The fig-leaf of increasing student fees to cover these brutal cuts amounts to the out-and-out marketisation and individualisation of these subject-areas. The message is clear and unambiguous – these fields of knowledge make no contribution to society; they are not public goods, and do not deserve public support, hence their future will depend entirely upon their market value as commodities. I simply cannot believe that you, as an educated man yourself and a beneficiary of publicly funded university teaching, actually believe that this is the right way forward for British higher education.
Quite apart from the effects that these reforms will have in amplifying social inequalities and shutting down what little remains of post-war social mobility, they will tear the public heart out of higher education and leave it thoroughly hollowed out, driven purely by the shallow logic of the market. I simply do not believe that you are so complete and sudden a convert to neo-liberal ideology as to actually believe that this is a positive step which will lead to higher standards via the ‘hidden hand’ of the market. I must therefore assume that you feel constrained by some feeling of pragmatic necessity – the notion that ‘there is no alternative’.
If so, I should remind you that the greatest strides towards a fairer society were made after the Second World War when this country was in far more debt than it is now. I should also remind you that for all your personal efforts, your coalition partners have proved utterly apathetic when it comes to reforming the banking culture that got us into this debt, or closing corporate tax loopholes. And yet look at their zeal when it comes to slashing welfare, public spending, education, and all the other bulwarks against rampant inequality. My point is this – the deficit does not excuse your regressive policies; it is a question of political will and political priorities.
A public higher education system should be a priority for any society. Its benefits are so wide and deep as to be immeasurable in terms of narrow definitions of economic ‘impact’. Replacing public funding with a privatised market effectively shoulders students – future generations – with the unacceptable burden of repaying a debt which they played no part in incurring; this is a travesty of social justice. Perhaps even more importantly, it undermines the core values of education itself, leaving it little more than a form of social and economic capital, an instrumental tool in the pursuit of individual advantage over others in the competitive game of life.
If you push this through, there is no turning back. Make no mistake, over time the cash nexus will thoroughly rot the system. I urge you to reconsider, even at this eleventh hour, and not merely to abstain – a frankly cowardly position, facilitating the passage of the reforms without taking responsibility for them – but to vote against the proposals. Only the right-wing will mock your ‘u-turn’, and in the process you may just save your own party’s dignity, and your place in the history of progressive politics.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Richie Nimmo,
Lecturer in Sociology, University of Manchester.