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without support public research postgraduate our universities - and the knowledge economy - will suffer

Britain leading universities. We have disproportionately more than any other country, given our size. They are not only intellectually and culturally important - any strategy to turn around the country would incorporate in your heart. They are also one of our largest and most successful industries, with revenues of £ 27 billion cool.

However, the assumption of our politicians and most of the cases it is not much to do to maintain their excellence. They took centuries to build up your strength and seems solid. But this national wealth could be lost in a generation. Instead of being understood and cultivated, treated with indifference impressive, if the essence of what they do - the ability to achieve academic excellence over time - is in danger

individual claims in universities does not seem unreasonable. Course, graduates must pay for his education for 30 years of his working life as a result of support in principle. Of course, universities should promote access growing. Of course, universities must do more business with the blood supply of scientific and technological knowledge. And taking into account other appropriations in the budget, the state may have to withdraw its support for more study and research graduates after their first title, and if people want to, they can find private funding, most do so, or not go at all. But put it all together - the speed and brutality of swingeing fee increase and the sudden withdrawal of support - and interdependent building a university which is beginning to be shaken to its foundations

For example, there were 310,000 postgraduate courses full time in universities last year, only 132,000 were British. Some follow their undergraduate degree with a master's degree, but many are involved in the initial investigation will be three or four years of work to get a PhD - the basis for a career in medical or scientific research or building block in a career university. If you believe in the idea of ??a knowledge economy - and no doubt segments more and more of the national economic and social life are increasingly knowledge-intensive - these are the men and women in the forefront. They are the best teachers of tomorrow, teachers, researchers, innovators, engineers, doctors, architects, lawyers, television directors, writers, historians and technologists.

But within two years, no diploma British master teaches will get public support and funding available for businesses will be a coupe based on the doctoral research of fifth. Students will graduate with more than $ 40,000 of debt under the new regime and contemplate costs more than double to obtain a doctorate in an economic environment where real wages and salaries have been frozen for seven or eight years. The consequences are obvious. If they can not win a few awards, or supporting a business or a charity, or have rich parents, just will not be able to engage in their study or research without crippling debt. Universities are bleeding its essence -. The young soldiers are standing intellectual leaders of the next generation

what? No vote on this issue. Some care. However, this is one of the most dynamic sectors of the UK workforce. More than 11% of the thirties maintain some sort of graduates increasingly essential if you want to build a career in anything in the media business through high-tech medicine. This is not the right approach and huge college to expand access for disadvantaged minorities in the early years, but the grades are no longer the passport to economic and social mobility used to be. The intensity of knowledge and cognitive demands of an increasing number of jobs today require intense intellectual and development of higher education to reflect this.

This should be a concern, but even more important is the ecology of the production and dissemination of knowledge. Everyone lip service to the truth that if the UK wants to increase their standard of living in any sustainable way, we must invest in knowledge. But this is a meaningless statement without an understanding of how knowledge is created and by whom. A university is not a greenhouse gas scientists with decorations on the edges - like the humanities - production off-the-peg-business ideas to patent and commercialize. It is an independent and autonomous housing several disciplines and cross-fertilization Serendipities the heart of the ability to expand the knowledge base. Is dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and intellectually in common - why freedom of research, publication and dissemination is the sine qua non of academic life. It is a public, open, so that a private university is a contradiction in terms. Knowledge and skills that go with it, is necessarily public money.

College is one. All interrelated and interdisciplinary concept is one that is now under siege. Universities can not wait to be free of constraints and difficult decisions. But is expected understanding of their inner life and his public contribution, including an essential component of their degree offers a large group may be able to remove it. Given the record levels of student debt - more than twice the United States, even - Graduate Ie support increasing not decreasing. The future of British universities in the knowledge economy and greater social mobility depends recognize this truth.

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