The government's plans to reform university funding are being criticised as creeping privatisation. It's happening anyway. Britain's universities straddle two worlds. One consists of full-time undergraduate courses, mainly filled by British students, with costs subsidised (but only partly) by the state. It is depressingly threadbare, overcrowded and politicised. There is government interference galore: to take more poor students in the name of social engineering, to promote particular subjects and courses to meet planners' priorities. Success comes when wily bureaucrats outwit the rulemakers. It reeks of the Soviet planned economy. The other world is of competition, for staff, students and research money. It is the world of mobile, flexible, go-ahead academics; of foreign, part-time and postgraduate students who have backed their choice of course with their own money, and expect value for it; of private businesses sponsoring research that they think will boost their profits. It is a much more dynamic, tougher but more cheerful place. Advancement comes through excellence, hard work, and ingenuity.
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