‘Political experiment’ must not reduce education to a commodity

By David Matthews. Students should not be turned into consumers, sector expert Jürgen Enders tells David Matthews. Since the beginning of the year, the UK’s pool of higher education experts, long derided as being too small to cover so many universities and students, has arguably taken a turn to the right.
Nick Hillman, special adviser to the universities and science minister David Willetts, was named the new head of the Higher Education Policy Institute at the beginning of August. He helped to devise the coalition’s £9,000 fee regime for undergraduates, but has insisted that he will “speak truth unto power” and “go wherever the evidence leads”. More...