A decade ago, I chaired a Times Higher Education debate in the Gay Hussar, a legendary Hungarian restaurant in Soho famed more as a venue for political plotting than for the quality of its goulash.
Among those to have hatched plans in the old Greek Street haunt were the Tory wets who hoped to oust Margaret Thatcher as party leader in the early 1980s, and the debate in 2012 tapped into this vein, discussing whether UK higher education was itself about to be overthrown.
It was sparked by an eruption of angst about New College of the Humanities, a private institution in Bloomsbury, fronted by the philosopher A. C. Grayling and touted as an alternative to Oxbridge.
The criticism had been acute: Grayling told the group that his venture had been denounced as “parasitic” and “exploitative”, while the late Ronald Dworkin, then professor of philosophy at New York University, said he had been accused of associating with a “fascist, capitalist institution” for taking a role as a lecturer.
Most prescient, though, was Grayling’s observation that it was “in a perverse way very flattering to be thought of as a great danger to the higher education system of the country – we’re a very small college”.
Too flattering, as it turned out. Fast-forward 10 years, and the Gay Hussar is no more – it closed after 65 years in the goulash and plots business, pushed out of a gentrifying Soho by rising rents.
New College of the Humanities did not make it to such a grand old age. It is now known as Northeastern University London, having failed to carve out a viable niche as a maverick, relocated from Bloomsbury to Wapping and added apprenticeships and “skills boot camps” to its offering.
All of which suggests that Grayling was right to see the fire and fury that came his way back in 2012 as over the top, although critics might say that it was the idea they were fighting, at a time when new private entrants were being enthusiastically encouraged to challenge the status quo.
As for government, Nick Hillman – who at the time was special adviser to the universities minister – told us later that while New College of the Humanities might have been cast as a poster child for alternative higher education provision, he had found it “incredibly frustrating” to deal with.
The institution “wanted to have its cake and eat it…it wanted no regulation, but it was desperate to have public funding”, he told us in 2021. “They wanted to be the anti-state university with state funding.”
This cautionary tale might not be entirely representative of the broader picture, but given the years of political rhetoric encouraging alternative providers, the returns seem scant indeed.
In our cover story this week, we review the current landscape, hearing from today’s protagonists such as the Swedish investor behind a London-based venture with just 45 students in its third cohort, who tells us that launching a start-up within UK higher education has “aged me 20 years in the last five”.
A picture emerges of challengers that remain deeply challenged and firmly on the periphery – partly because of constraints of the system, and partly because of other barriers, such as reputation.
For universities, the sense that private institutions pose a major threat to their own operations probably faded some time ago – other, much more pressing threats abound.
In an interview this week, Sir Chris Husbands, who retires as vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University at the end of the year, offers an assessment of how universities might firm up their own shaky foundations.
He warns that the sector’s lobbying for higher tuition fees risks sounding like it is saying “please give us more money to carry on doing what we are already doing”, when instead, “we’ve got to approach this differently: to say, over the next 30, 40 years, what are universities for?”
Husbands makes a persuasive case, particularly on the need for partnerships within regions with local authorities and industry, and at a time when Labour are known to be casting about for ideas.
I visited Peterborough last week and spent an afternoon at Anglia Ruskin University’s new campus in a city that has been crying out for a university for 40 years.
It has one now, and is embracing the opportunities it brings to one of the country’s fastest-growing cities, where the need is for higher skills and tailor-made support for local people, industry and civic aspiration. That came not from a private challenger, but from a public institution with a clear mission and commitment to the East of England, as well as a long track record of delivery.
It is a bit strange, after the best part of a millennium, how quick some are to write off universities, and their ability to continue delivering value and to adapt to the times.