Since the Robbens Report of 1963, higher education has been a political issue. The introduction of the maintenance grant created a new climate whereby many students came to assume that it was a primary responsibility of the state to pay tuition fees and maintenance costs. Class sizes have increased. Lecturers feel underpaid. Many students lack enough money to maintain a reasonable standard of living.
University education is central to any modern democratic, industrialised nation.
Ministers, in both the Department of Education and the Scottish Office, have issued guidelines in respect of academic standards and decreed the level of funding necessary for a quality university education. Yet the universities, heavily dependent on the Treasury, are now losing their international pre-eminence. Any advanced country needs universities. They perform vital academic, cultural and economic functions. It is no accident that almost all of the UK's top universities were founded before the rise of state collectivism.