So much for levelling up – if you work in higher education, all you see is decline

Like much that has been trashed in this country in the past 12 years, higher education is just another to be added to the list – along with the health service, the justice system, transport, business and schools, writes Julia Bell

Every little bit of the country has been sold off, privatised, asset-stripped and ripped off, until what remains is evidence everywhere of systemic private sector failure (AFP/Getty)

Another day, another threat of redundancies at a UK higher education institution. This time it’s personal: nearly a dozen staff are at risk in my own creative writing department and the English department at Birkbeck, University of London, which is planning to cut up to 140 jobs by next summer – following in the footsteps of Roehampton, Goldsmiths, Leicester and Sheffield Hallam.

There goes our five star reputation, our “second in the country for research excellence”, our vibrant student body of adult learners, our excellent PhD cohort and all the collective knowledge this contains. Colleagues across the sector shudder and offer solidarity and wonder when it will be them. And in the middle of the maelstrom in this year of perma-crisis, we wonder what the hell the value of our institution, built on goodwill and openhearted principles, really is. How can it survive?

Like much that has been trashed in this country in the past 12 years of government misrule, UK higher education is just another to be added to the list – along with the health service, the justice system, transport, energy, business and schools.