20 July 2026
Dear Prime Minister
On behalf of the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), I request a meeting with you to discuss Higher Education. The sector needs a review of management, purpose and funding.
British universities were envied until recently in other countries for our teaching, research, and openness to the world. We were a made-in-the-UK success story. All this is now imperilled, as the sector contracts and foreign students and staff are frightened away.
You have spoken about the education system needing to serve young people not equipped to take the university route, and we understand the importance of that. However, the two routes are not mutually exclusive. Indicators show that higher education increases not only productivity, but health, wellbeing, and longevity. Outcomes cannot be measured only in graduate salaries. Education of all types is a public as well as a private good.
Like the utilities of which you have also spoken, higher education over our lifetimes has become subjected to the laws of the market economy. An ethos of public service has been replaced with the spirit of competition between institutions. As neighbours become rivals, collaboration in teaching, never more straightforward to deliver than in the era of digital technology, is not permitted, though desperately needed in many subject areas.
As universities restructure in the face of financial deficits, highly qualified staff in the prime of their careers and at the peak of their powers are laid off. Many trained throughout their twenties with investment from taxpayers. These redundancies are a waste of national resources and can bring devastation to individuals and their families. Local economies suffer and prospects for economic growth diminish.
The system of loans and fees introduced by the Cameron-Clegg government was always a quick fix and has now imploded. It is generationally unjust, biased against students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and has impoverished universities.
We wish you congratulations on the confirmation of your appointment and good luck in your new role. We hope that finding a new direction for higher education can become a priority of your administration.
With best wishes on behalf of the CDBU
Julian Preece
Chair of the Executive Committee