Friday 1 June 2012

Privatisation: the Ministry interfering at Hogwarts

Our universities are being privatised, or so many on the Left would have us believe. But how true is it? And is it necessarily a bad thing? In a series of features over the next few weeks, I will be investigating several areas of privatisation at Imperial College and at universities across the UK, areas where corporations are filling a role that used to be public.

I’ll look at the Careers Services at our Universities, to try to find out why many students are dissatisfied with the variety they offer. I’ll discuss Corporate Partnership schemes, to see whether academic-industry collaboration really can be a good thing.

But this week I’ll look at every academic’s nightmare: the Research Councils.