Academe and the state
From Dr Alan Stacey Sir: The hostility of Oxford University to Lady Thatcher, described by Terence Kealey (`She's too good for them', 21 August), has been at a far greater cost than a lost few million in donations from her foundation. Her premiership provided the opportunity, sadly flunked, to re-establish a safe distance between the universities and the state, dismantling the machinery of gov- ernment control which has been stealthily assembled over decades.
Instead, the scheme of government money to help the brightest grammar-
LETTERS
school children attend the best universities has evolved into the unwieldy quango that is HEFCE; universities have to contend with the mountains of meaningless paper- work which constitute the Teaching Quality Assessment, national pay scales so that Cambridge competes with Keele rather than Harvard, and other horrors, most recently the Teaching and Higher Educa- tion Act 1998 which took the catastrophic step of turning Oxbridge colleges into pub- licly funded institutions, removing their basic right to charge their own fees. We now have a hostile and tyrannical govern- ment, determined not only to cut funding but also — with that traditional left-wing combination of ideology and ignorance to demand politically driven changes in sen- sitive matters, such as admissions, about which ministers know next to nothing.
While many dons see their role as being to dance to the music of government, even if they sometimes grumble about the tune, a significant number now dream of a return to true independence, charging realistic fees but with generous scholarships based on both means and ability — funded by benefactions which flow more easily when universities are not seen as an offshoot of the state. This could have been readily achieved with the blessing of the Thatcher administration; but most dons in Oxbridge, accustomed to years of cosy relations with the government, and of despising Thatcherism, would then have fiercely resisted such reform. No doubt deterred by the prospect of such a battle, Margaret Thatcher never undertook the necessary radical overhaul. As a result, we remain at the mercy of this and future governments.
Alan Stacey
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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