Quitting Europe would be big, but not a crisis on the home front

Financial fallout from a decision to leave the EU would, in reality, be minimal for higher education institutions, argues Alison Wolf.
We will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice," announced David Cameron last week: to stay in the European Union on the terms our government negotiates or to "come out altogether".
Suppose the UK population chooses "Out". How much should universities, as universities, care? And how much would we even notice?
For Britain as a whole, the consequences are large. Given academics' views and voting patterns, it is hard to believe that most would be in the "Out" camp. But for our institutions it is not obvious that the change would be dramatic. And I can think of some university finance directors who would be grinning widely.
It has been an article of faith in Brussels that, within the EU, states will converge in every way. A few years ago, I co-authored a report for the European Commission on "convergence and divergence" in European education. Our sponsors took it for granted that we would find convergence, and we had a hard time even getting "divergence" into the contract title. Read more...