Thread by @UWankings

Universities should be allowed to fail, they're wasteful - let's make an example of one. This is wrong-headed, for several reasons:

A thread.

https://twitter.com/BetterUnis/status/1280404858772881409

1. A university which closes may not have been mismanaged. It's more likely to be newish, undergrad-focused, lower status (not lower quality).

There is bad practice in HE, mistakes are made, but low-ranking universities don't have a monopoly on this. It's possibly the opposite.

2. A university which closes has huge effects on hundreds of people: academics and support staff, the students, and the local neighbourhood (housing, retail, services).

If it's a low status uni, it's more likely to be in a less affluent area, its students are local, less mobile.

3. A university which closes acting as a deterrent to others buys into the idea that a) fear is the best incentive for change - it's not - and b) it's a dog-eat-dog sector, which it isn't/shouldn't be - the biggest dogs are too greedy by far.

4. Universities do receive a lot of money in raw terms, but not relative to what they do. Staff are underpaid and overworked - the 'profit margins' are not great. Putting together/delivering degrees, support services, facilities, and research, are labour- and expertise-intensive.

5. Universities waste money? At times, yes, but the job of a university is more about being good at education and research, not a lean, mean, fighting machine. A lot of 'waste' is imposed: marketing and reputation management, managerial bureaucracy, excess reporting to quangos.

6. Universities could do better. Yes, they could - they're sectorally unequal and they reflect/intensify a lot of the wider social issues. A university 'failing' won't make them do better at this - it'd be counterproductive, enforcing more parsimony, sidelining social justice.