Political action

On research, immigration and funding Boris Johnson’s government offers much for universities. Now they must be proactive too.

The government could be forgiven for not having higher education reform at the top of its agenda as it commutes back and forth from the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week. 

But behind the drama of current debates on Brexit, the pressures that dictate the attitudes of the different political parties to universities and to their funding and regulation, remain. The instinct that drove the Labour Party to announce that only 7 per cent of people from private schools should go to university  (each university or all of them? It’s unclear) won’t change.