Introduction
The supposedly ‘irresistible’ rise of Reform in the face of disappointment with Labour was yesterday (26 February 2026) stopped in Gorton and Denton by a surge to the Green Party. I wrote this opinion piece for the Times Higher Education a week ago in response to the question above, but they declined to publish it. So I am publishing it here.
The student loan funding system is in danger of collapse under its own contradictions. But how might a call for greater government support for HE be squared with the threat of a potential Reform Government?
Such a government would present UK HE with three threats:
- Cutting funding
- Targeting overseas staff and students
- Attacking university autonomy, academic freedom and science
These are already materialising as the rise of the far right, including in the US, are pushing Labour in a rightward trajectory.
What about Harvard? Would it be in a weaker position if it relied on public funding?
In the US, the tuition fee market is a paper shield. Harvard is an outlier. Its ability to limit Trump’s attacks is because it is Harvard, with Harvard’s credibility and endowments.
But US universities face continual attacks.
UK universities rely on the state
UK Higher Education is dependent on state funding in one form or another. The tuition fee scheme depends on Treasury-backed student loans. Although UKRI is not the sole investor in UK research, it is the majority one.
What about self-funded students? Increased financial dependence on overseas students makes the sector vulnerable to any governing party using immigration and the ‘hostile environment’ to play to a right-wing gallery.
In 2016, I was one of the editors of the Alternative White Paper for Higher Education. We pointed out that the “market system” was not a free market, but one that paradoxically increased state control over higher education.
This ‘market’ allowed governments to select courses for subsidies or reductions in fees, whether for schoolteachers, nurses or courses related to the arms industry. It created an array of levers for state intervention.
In their 2024 election manifesto, Reform UK pledged to scrap interest on student loans but extend repayment for 45 years, and increase visa restrictions on overseas students. Last May, Nigel Farage announced a plan for substantial tax and expenditure cuts (the tax cuts promises have been watered down). When Reform politicians today comment on the Plan 2 student loan crisis, their solution is to cut courses and students going to university. They could easily introduce new conditions on student loans, limiting access to Arts and Humanities courses with low graduate earnings.
We have a fight on our hands to defend higher education.
Facing up to Reform now
The question becomes, how do we create the kind of broad, publicly-supported campaign for the defence of HE to resist cuts in government funding – whatever the ruling party?
We need a manifesto for a Higher Education sector fit for the twenty-first century. This manifesto must be written for a mass audience. It needs to convince future students, their parents, employers and the wider public of the value and relevance of HE today.
As a first task, we must address the pretender in our midst: the epistemological crisis created by generative AI. It would be naive to believe that Reform will not seek to promote ‘AI’ as an alternative to HE. Indeed, Keir Starmer started the ball rolling when he announced his intention that 10% of civil service posts will be replaced by AI and ‘tech apprentices’.
Colleagues are beginning to discuss the implications of AI on curriculum design. But alongside this, we need to address popular myths that artificial intelligence ‘knows’ answers, or even that it is an alternative to Higher Education and research.
The case for higher education has not fundamentally changed. It is still to develop students to become reflective and critical thinkers, researchers and practitioners. As a colleague memorably put it,
“The role of higher education is to take the undergraduate to the edge of human knowledge – and look over it.”
We face an assault on science.
Donald Trump appointed the vaccine-denying Robert F Kennedy as Secretary of Health and Human Services and tasked Elon Musk with purging government departments of ‘DEI’ (equality-related) activity. Now he denounces climate science, and promotes ‘clean coal’ and the exploitation of Greenland. The attack on DEI has become demands on universities to purge ‘woke’ content from curricula.
Like the MAGA movement, Reform is tapping into popular anger against austerity and poverty, but plans wide-ranging cuts in state expenditure. Since it cannot deliver to this base, it turns to racism to deflect anger onto immigrants and black people as well as “liberal elites”.
One quarter of UK university staff and students are international. Reform have announced their intention to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain. Colleagues and students will face deportation.
Our sector is in Reform’s crosshairs.
We are going to need a sustained organized campaign, and we need to start now.
We need a discussion at every level within our sector, which is why I have been trying to promote this debate in my election campaign within UCU.
What is the role of the trade unions?
First, UCU has members in every discipline. Union branches are in a good position to support a broad-based campaign among staff to develop a manifesto into which learned societies and professional bodies can input.
Second, campus trade unions including UCU, UNITE, UNISON, GMB and EIS can support the widest possible outreach to the wider public, strengthening our ability to communicate that case. It can take the case to other public and private sector trade unions for a wider public defence of higher education.
Our ability to resist a Reform government will be much stronger if, in the months and years beforehand, we have built a serious campaign in our own defence.
Reform can be beaten at the polls. The far right’s rise is not inevitable. But we must prepare in case they take office.
We do not simply defend the university in the sense of the intellectual space of academic freedom and autonomy. We must defend all who work and study within.
So alongside everything we do, we have to stand up now against the racism and division fostered by the far right. That is why UCU is supporting the Together Alliance demonstration in Central London on 28th March.
Every university UCU branch should reach out to campus trade unions, the Student Union, etc. to organise a staff and student launch meeting. For example, at UCL we have a UCL Together Alliance meeting on 4 March.
