Universities: Could we be saying goodbye to some of our oldest institutions?

Many if not all universities worldwide demonstrated their agility and capability to transform their auditoriums and classrooms into digital spaces where students could join in from any location. This was of course their response to the recent global pandemic. Despite the enormous efforts put in by universities to make this transition as seamless as possible, it undoubtedly shook their foundations and cracks may have already started to run through the mortar at the back of their lecture halls.

If I bought a ticket to go and watch my favourite football team play in their stadium but was told on arrival that due to some sort of issue, I would have to watch the game on a screen in a local bar, I would not be best pleased. If I knew that was where I would have ended up when I bought the ticket the chances are, I would have declined their offer and opted to watch it in a bar that better suited my preferences. Furthermore, when being told about the new arrangements I would most certainly be feeling the right to some sort of compensation. The value of the ticket no longer seems fair, it wasn’t the product I agreed to buy and although after making the journey I would not want a full refund, as I wouldn’t want to miss the game. However, I would want perhaps a partial refund. This analogy of course relates to thousands of UK students who were told that the course and campuses they had agreed to attend would have to move online and students would need to dial in from remote locations. Not the experience they paid for and yet, no partial refund from the universities. And for those of you that do not know, UK university fees are currently set at £9,250 per year. A little bit more than the price of a ticket for your next Arsenal game! But this, as upsetting as it may be for many students, won’t have had much impact on our universities and certainly isn’t going to bring them down. So what is?

They may become the victim of their own success during the pandemic. What they were able to do is demonstrate that they could deliver accredited, university quality degree courses to people located anywhere in the world. And the biggest issue with this? They could do it without the burden of their biggest limiting factor, how many seats they can physically fit in their classrooms. Now the question for the student becomes this, am I in this for the life experience or the education? If it’s the life experience then not much changes to the decision making process. However, if the answer is education, then the next question is, do you want to enrol on a course with one of the UKs top ten or even five universities or would you like to enrol somewhere else, remember, both courses will cost you the same!

Of course it is not quite this simple. The University of Oxford could not accept every applicant on to one of their courses as it will dilute their product of exclusivity and prestige. But in truth, their new digital lecture halls could be ten times larger than their physical equivalents without having any impact on their brand. So if the University of Oxford increased the number of students enrolled on a course, for every course they ran, and the other nine in the top ten followed suit, the number of available students left for everyone else will have shrank significantly.

It is true that many students, particularly undergrads will want to experience living in a new city far from home as part of their studies. But with the overall number of available students shrinking, cities that host more than one university, may see them start to merge and downsize in an attempt to survive.