Universities’ distress, and more-than-shaky future, are now taken for granted. They are also likely here to stay. Less attention has been given to where we’re going, an important oversight or silence given that the country is by default choosing to completely revolutionise its Higher Education offer. 

That’s a critical lapse. Without looking ahead to our likely endpoint, we can’t really see what we’re doing. Blundering around in the dark, while making benighted decision after befuddled mistake that makes our destination, which would be obvious if you just switched on the lights for a moment, is no substitute for a clear-eyed view of the near future. Especially because universities’ day-after-tomorrow is rapidly taking shape.

Here’s how our present winner-takes-all race to the bottom is going to shake out, mainly because universities have been ‘set free’ to seize each other warmly by the throat. A small elite will emerge, probably in two groups. The first will be an ‘international’ class of global universities, which attract most of their students from a world market and which aren’t really part of any Higher Education ‘system’, or indeed Britain, at all. There will be a lot of scrambling to get into this group, and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when most don’t make it, but really only Oxbridge and a tiny number of others can or will clear the many hoops of reputation and reach involved.

Underneath that gold or platinum level, most big Russell Group universities will thrum away in the Championship below the Premier League of the ‘international’ group. These ‘national’ universities, for the most part famous nineteenth century redbricks in big provincial cities, will look for the most part like they always did. They’ll continue to offer an all-in experience, with students going away to halls and shared houses to perhaps even study Arts and Humanities subjects. These large players may become more and more friendly with regional and city mayors, England’s new regional administrations and the Welsh and Scottish governments, though the situation in those two latter countries will continue to get worse than it is in England, and more quickly.

Academics in those two constellations will likely protest about the imposition of a balkanised, divided university sector. But in reality they have very little say and even less power, their authority having long ago been stripped away by central university bureaucracies. They will also be acutely aware of just how lucky they are, and the potential penalties for making a fuss. Just as some continue to jet around the world to conferences like David Lodge’s fictional professors during the 1970s, all the while professing to support the environment, the planet and alternative economics, they will offer professions of solidarity without really being able to do anything.

On the other hand, a whole middle-ranking tier of ‘regional’ universities is going to be ripped to shreds and then either dumped in a hole or put back together in atrociously careless ways. By the end of that grim experiment, the majority of the sector, and most of the institutions students actually attend, will look like a Frankenstein’s Monster that doesn’t even make it to that august level of autonomy. Here there will be a mix of local and national students, and some remnants of the old university idea: a scattering of Arts, Humanities and Political Science departments will survive in this part of universityworld.

Lower down the old-fashioned scale of authority and prestige, post-‘92 universities who don’t make it into the ‘regional’ group will either become local colleges of HE (if they’re fairly successful and solvent) or be rammed together in a load of cut-and-shut shotgun marriages masquerading as ‘mergers’. These won’t actually be mergers. They will be nothing more or less than buckets of the dying smaller fry, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean and slopped around into mud sculptures on sunny beaches – all the better to dry out and crack up.

No doubt successive governments have thought all this pretty clever. This way, they get to make the whole sector smaller with little political pain on their part. They can dump responsibility on bad managers, risk-taking, too much borrowing. The dark side of Higher Education’s pain and toxicity will dribble out on the local and regional news, all the better for voters not to join the dots. The rundown will look piecemeal, disorganised, random.

 There’s some method to that madness. It was probably an error that we tried to pretend that all universities could do everything, all the same, all the time. The coming demographic bust of the 2030s will make it even harder for most universities to struggle on. They have to be downsized in some manner, and the present move towards an ‘international’, ‘national’, ‘regional’ and ‘local’ split is one way to do that. It’s not as rational as a planned reorganisation, but then politics isn’t rational. If it wants to duck responsibility no government can possibly be explicit about its intentions until the process is irreversible. Who really wants to take the blame?

 It would, however, probably be better to take a more systematic approach to Higher Education – at least if we look at this from a public policy rather than a political point of view. Where should our universities be sited? How many people should go to what type? What subjects should stay in or go to each part of the country, to make sure everyone can study them? These are fundamental questions that should not be left to hasty and piecemeal decisions in each separate university.

 The strategy of deflection will not be entirely successful in any case, even on its own terms. We’re talking tens of thousands of jobs here, and many universities are either in or next to Labour seats such as Uxbridge (majority 587), Loughborough (majority 4,960), Newcastle-under-Lyme (majority 5,069) and Lancaster (majority 9,253). The economies and social lives of those seats are profoundly intertwined with the mass university system New Labour in office helped to build. The fallout from downsizing or failure won’t fall entirely on Labour and its supporters, but the debris will give them a light dusting anyway.

 Most people won’t be happy with this outcome. You won’t be able to take many subjects, from Music to Chemistry, across huge swathes of the ‘regional’ and ‘local’ universities. That will mean many poorer Britons can’t study them at all. Taxpayers will wonder where on earth their money is going, as the government spends untold billions every year on a what was once a shiny and exciting ideas machine but which is for the most part being ripped up and swapped out for an unconvincing scarecrow with a sign saying ‘university’ swinging from its neck. Creative industries, design, theatre, the arts, cinema: all will be noticeably smaller, and sadder. Many parts of traditionally ‘Labour’ parts of the country will suffer badly, further locking that party into a spiral of decline.

 But on the other hand, most voters never experience Higher Education. Like most of us, the majority have only a dim memory of it as something fun when they were young or a quick insight from Open Days for – and visits to – their children. No doubt politicians in London, Cardiff and Edinburgh can for now get away with the Great Inequity of “world-class education for you, ‘uni’ for you, college for you, training for you”. But far more importantly, something about the country, its contract with young people, indeed a sense of place and our potential shared futures will have been lost: something wonderful.