We have spent thirty years asking the wrong people to fund universities. It is time for a new social contract

The post-war settlement that shaped modern British higher education was based on an idea, made explicit by the Robbins Report 1963, that access to university should be determined by ability, not means, and the state would fund it because an educated population and a flourishing research base were public goods. As the benefits of knowledge creation at universities accrued to society across generations and communities, the onus was on the state to fund it.

However, over the past thirty years, we have quietly abandoned that principle. This shift began with the Dearing Report in 1997, which introduced tuition fees and justified them on the basis of the graduate earnings premium. This has led to a dramatic decline in public funding for universities, and nearly half of the universities are projected to be in deficit in 2025-26.