Trouble ahead

The degree loan book may be squeezed to make room for the ‘lifetime skills guarantee’

Universities have long had their suspicions that this government doesn’t really like them very much.

It could be the endless (and usually baseless) attacks on higher education’s record on free speech. Or perhaps it’s the fact that while businesses were being bailed out left, right and centre at the height of the pandemic, ministers threw a few quid at universities on the understanding that it should all be paid back as soon as this nasty business was all over. Oh, and the fact that any further financial assistance is tied to a restructuring programme with so many strings attached that it wouldn’t look out of place at a marionette convention.