The higher education green paper is a radical document, explicitly designed to change universities. But beyond the debates about metrics, funding structures and social mobility is a far more fundamental reframing – of the very concept of higher education.

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The authors of the green paper do not view students as citizens in an educational relationship but as customers taking part in a market transaction. Once this frame of reference is accepted, the priorities and language of the debate change; learning and education are secondary to opening up new markets and meeting the needs of employers. We must ask ourselves: is this really about fulfilling potential or is it just selling out?

In his classic tome In Defence of Politics, first published in 1962, Bernard Crick argues that some sectors of public life are simply too important to be handed over to the vagaries and vulgarities of the market. The role of the state, he says, is to counterbalance the market and protect certain sectors because of their social importance and benefit to the public. But over the past few decades, the role of higher education in Britain has been progressively narrowed down to the provision of skills required by of the labour market – whatever those may be.

We are moving from a public to a private notion of universities, in which higher education is just another market. This, above all else, should be of primary concern to the generations of yesterday, today and tomorrow, because it threatens the integrity of British cultural and civilisational development.

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Until relatively recently, politicians of all political hues believed that public investment in higher education was justified on the grounds that it provided public benefits to society as a whole. In 1818, the year before he founded the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote of his desire to create “a system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest”. His presidential predecessor John Adams said: “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expense of it.”

It was not until the 1980s that the principle of publicly funded higher education, designed to yield primarily public benefits, was meaningfully challenged in the US and the UK.

But the only mention of the public benefits of higher learning in the green paper are in terms of debt repayment and tax revenue. Students have become mere financial products, and the public interest is reduced to the public purse.

And yet, it was only a matter of months ago that David Willetts – the former minister for universities who introduced the £9,000 fees – encouraged his readers to follow Stefan Collini in accepting that “there is a public, not merely a private, benefit from higher education that can be characterised in various, not merely economic, terms” (pdf).

In downplaying the public benefits of higher education, we run the risk of disregarding values such as dialogue, creativity and democracy, which metrics such as the Teaching Excellence Framework (Tef) do not measure, and which, perhaps, are not quantifiable at all. These values serve the public good and deserve a place in universities, because they will serve our students and our societies in the long run.

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The role of a green paper is to mark the beginning of a debate rather than to signal the government’s final position on a topic. We really hope this is still the case. As it stands, the Tef looks set to squeeze out innovation and increase bureaucracy, potentially destroying the intellectual passion and energy that should enthuse every lecturer.

To truly fulfil our potential we need to grasp the broader social value of universities and instil in our students the desire to acquire what US author David Brooks calls “eulogy virtues” not merely “resume virtues”, that is to say: “resume virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace […] eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral – whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?”

It is understandable that, in these precarious times, university teachers will do their utmost to help students develop their resume virtues in order to gain access to meaningful employment. But it is also important that we help our students to develop eulogy virtues and help them to think about what makes their work and their lives, meaningful to them and the wider world. After all, it is in this manner that university teaching finds its full public, and ultimately, human, significance.

Joshua Forstenzer is the vice-chancellor’s fellow for the public benefit of higher education, and Matthew Flinders is professor of politics and founding director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, both at the University of Sheffield

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