"Privatisation of the Universities"

It’s not long since we have witnessed the increase of university tuition fee from £3000 to £9000. It was good setback for most of the prospective and current university students, who want to get higher education before settling down for a career. As a consequence, we have seen protests in the streets of the country against increasing tuition fee; but nothing worked at the end as the policy of £9000 tuition fee has been implemented by the government irrespective of demonstrations by the students which reduced the number of students joining the universities eventually. Now, they are trying to privatise our top universities in the country.

 When we are approaching to a ‘market society’, where everything is for sale, there treating education as a product, that can be bought and sold, may not echo much appalling to some of us, who can picture education as a product. This concept of market is spreading faster than ever after the financial recession. It is not difficult to depict the rational for privatisation is financial. There is a great expectation that privatisation will help reducing government cost for education by creating a competitive market. While it is important to save money in this financial crisis, I would like to, without sounding reluctance to commercialisation, give some reasons why government should not privatise the universities.

Once privatised, education will become a product to the universities, and more or less, students will become consumers. Their traditional status as learners or researchers may disappear soon. It would not require any practical example how we consumers are treated by the companies in our daily life. Just think!! They are always up for their profit regardless our expectations from them, and it would be wrong to expect otherwise from private universities. When the main goal will be cutting cost and increasing profit, the quality of education is likely to be jeopardised. We have seen in recent years many companies, even the government departments, were reducing their staffs for saving money. (the implication being- same tutors might be teaching at several universities at the same time or some less qualified persons from other professions would be hired to do their job.) When there are not enough qualified staffs to do the job, the result will be substandard education.

Every year government spends millions of pound for university research facilities. It helped the universities of the country to get fame all around the world for inventing new technologies and ideas. Currently, there are five UK universities within the top ten universities of the world and thanks to the research facilities in our universities for that. However, it has been reported the UK is gradually falling behind in research comparing some other countries in recent years. In this situation, privatisation of the universities may badly affect the researching facilities of the universities and their fame in the world. It will become a trading place rather than a place of ideas and innovations.

Another significant point is that the privatisation will create a division for the university students. Some universities will be running under the current supervision of the government and some will be governed by other authorities ( with a regulatory body: see next para). So, the students from public universities may start thinking they are better than private university students or vice-versa. This division might not sound that dreadful, but it will bring along another division, the division for job opportunities. The employers may set different terms for different university students and would give preference one over another. This is quite evident in Bangladesh where a student graduating from a public university is more likely to get a job compared to his counterparts.

Though it can be argued that regulatory authorities may keep the situation alike by making sure the private institutions are maintaining their standards. If, it sounds persuasive or convincing for privatisation nonetheless it may not be so straightforward. The statistics from different countries especially countries with inequality tend to show- when a public function has been delegated to private companies with a regulatory body to monitor their activities and standard, there were corruptions, because the fierce competition of the market tempts some companies to bribe the authority to get their way. Are we ready to give away all of these?!