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The Multiple Crises of Higher Education

When: Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Where: iQ East (Scape) 0.14, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End

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Join the Mile End Institute and the Accounting and Accountability Research Group (AARG) to explore the multiple crises that are currently affecting UK Higher Education, emerging from efforts to reorganise the sector around a market for education. 

The university system is being rocked by financial crises, continuous and widespread restructurings, redundancies and closures across the sector. The sustainability of the fees-based funding model has long been in question and is generating a competitive scramble for students, widespread financial risk and putting greater pressure on students who have endured the dislocation of education under lockdown, the cost-of-living crisis and face the prospect of further indebtedness as calls for higher fees are made. This event brings together academic and policy experts to explore some of the causes, consequences and connections between these crises.

How do we make sense of financial ‘crisis’ in the sector, given both the scale of the issue but also the diversity of institutions affected? What are the cultures and logics of governance that accompany the multiple crises in UK HE? How are they, and might they, be contested and changed? Where do students fit within our analysis of these multiple crises? How are they affected and how are expectations of students evolving within this crisis landscape? What do these multiple crises imply for our understanding of the meaning of higher education, as a public good and social right?

Speakers: 

  • Dr James Brackley (University of Sheffield)
  • Dr David Harvie (Deprofessionalised academic)
  • Prof Steve Jones (University of Manchester)
  • Prof Natalie Fenton (Goldsmiths University)
  • Dr Jana Bacevic (Durham University)
  • Rose Stephenson (Director of Policy, HEPI)

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