The consequences of Brexit are depressing and universities are only beginning to see the many ways in which this moment of madness may damage them. At the same time they have the higher education bill to think about, a bad bill that would give the secretary of state powers over universities that would be frightening if it wasn’t so incoherent. We shall have to hope it will be exposed to rigorous examination in parliament.

This is the season for standing back to ask what has gone wrong. How has a higher education system enrolling 2.5 million students, admitting half of all school leavers, which should be at the heart of the nation’s life, ended up stigmatised as the source of arrogant “experts” and evil globalisation?

The referendum exposed an alarming degree of resentment among the less educated against the more educated. Too many people believe things have got worse for them and are no longer convinced their children will benefit from more education. They have abandoned faith in an inter-generational contract that has sustained Britain for at least two centuries.

Who can blame them? Education no longer seems such a high road to hope. Schools are being drained of their creativity and exuberance, and replaced by a testing regime of which Thomas Gradgrind would have been proud. There is no magic there.

In English higher education students are accumulating a lifetime of debt. Graduates face an uncertain job market, more uncertain still after Brexit, at a time when the value of a university education has been shrunk to a licence to get a decent job. And the “performance” steamroller crushing the life out of schools is heading our way.

But a bigger problem may be that people listen to our chatter, even if they can’t tell their TEF (teaching excellence framework) from their REF (research excellence framework). We no longer really believe in “widening participation”, despite the cynical name checking of “social mobility” in the white paper. Instead we talk, obsessively, about “world-class universities”.

“Widening participation” embraced, however tentatively, everyone, the democratic “us”. “World class universities” are for “them”, for the few. We seem to be saying higher education is not for most people – so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised if some conclude higher education is on the side of the elites.

This big change is illustrated by the shifting fortunes of the two major blocks in higher education, the 27 research-intensive universities that make up the Russell Group and the so-called “post-1992” universities, the former polytechnics. Today ministers behave as if the former are the only universities that count. The latter are on the back foot, in the eyes of the same politicians ripe to be “challenged” (a favourite word) by low-cost for-profit providers.

But it is the “post-1992” universities that have done most to extend the higher education franchise. London Metropolitan probably recruits more BME students than the entire Russell Group. And students in the Russell Group are becoming more socially privileged, not less, as Britain has become more unequal.

If the Russell Group had any sense, it would see that its interests lie in celebrating the achievement of London Met and others like it, to help build popular support for higher education as a whole.

But sadly, solidarity is out of fashion. It was a former vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Alison Richard, who once said world-class universities flourish best in a world-class system – in other words, “we are all in it together”, so the success of Cambridge depends on the success of the likes of London Met. I wonder how many vice-chancellors of our “best” universities still think like that.