In 2010 the UK government proposed huge cuts and market-driven reforms for Universities. The proposals provoked widespread opposition in the form of street protests, occupations, and online campaigns. As the dust settles, Andrew McGettigan surveys the emerging brave new world of Higher Education. Displaying a stunning grasp of the policy details, he looks at the long term impact of the changes, which have been obscured by the focus on tuition fee increases. What will be the role of universities within society? How will they be funded? What kind of experiences will they offer students? Written in a clear and engaging style,The Great University Gamble outlines the architecture of the new policy regime, which many find difficult to grasp.…
"Yes. This is a book by Andrew McGettigan. The thing I really admire about Andrew McGettigan is that he is trying to understand the sensibilities of the political class that is driving these changes. Much of the defence of the university—and I would be as guilty of this as anyone else—is made from a kind of lofty commitment to a vision of what the university should be and the values that are precious that should be sustained. What McGettigan does, which I think is brilliant and much needed, is to try and get inside the logic of those who are driving the changes. It’s not—as some of my colleagues think, and I myself thought—that these changes are an attack in a straightforward ideological sense, that they are trying to challenge the power bases of the universities that are left leaning. What McGettigan shows is that those changes have been driven out of a commitment to students conceived as consumers. They are changes that are being made in the name of students getting value for money, transferable skills, and all the rest of it. What he does so brilliantly is to see how this conception of university education is completely shaped within that consumerist logic. And what he then does is follow the money and develops a very powerful critique which more or less says that the numbers don’t add up. There won’t be enough in the way of revenue to sustain university growth over a long period of time. The fee regime which has been pushed through at speed involves the risk of what McGettigan calls ‘subprime’ degrees. The student loan-book will produce a long-term financial toxicity. There is a financial crisis written into the way in which these changes have been imposed. The gamble that he identifies is that through market forces, large parts of the higher education sector will be exposed while the elite institutions will be protected and will ultimately flourish in the long run. But at what cost? It is our students who will ultimately pay for the ‘great university gamble’ that McGettigan exposes so well. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter He is an academic, but he is also a very, very accomplished journalist. I think Andrew McGettigan is the best ethnographer of the changing university sector that we have writing today. He is a brilliantly attentive observer of what’s happening to higher education in the UK."
