Billions of pounds lopped off departmental budgets is going to hurt like a bastard eventually but the world won't fall apart during the next 24 hours. Instead, it heralds the beginning of a slow decline in services and infrastructure for the UK. Posts may not be made redundant en masse but retiring colleagues, colleagues with new jobs outside the organisation or seconded out or moving departments may not be replaced. For some people, it will be a case of looking round a half-empty office in a year's time and realising that the reason they are working an extra 10 hours a week to stand still is because nowadays they ARE the team.
A friend said to me last week-end that she predicted the outright closure of some smaller universities given the size of the savings target set for the Department of Education. So look out Winchester University and Whatsit College in Cleethorpes: your days are numbered. Surely it would make more sense to take a league table of universities and just stop funding the bottom third of it? Harsh but any less fair than keeping open the remaining two departments of Scumbag College so that 100 students a year can be educated? I don't know how robust the Sunday Times annual league table is but if the results bear any relation to reality, then the University of West London, nee Thames Valley University, needn't bother opening it's doors this Monday.
Alternatively, the ConDems could stop this insanity, realise that decent quality education is what we should be aiming for and start expanding and funding courses that add something to the skill level or sum total of human knowledge in this country? Something that I don't believe for one minute you get when every Further Education College in the country has been turned into a university. I'm not arguing for a return to Brideshead Revisited but less mediocrity and meaningless degrees would not go amiss.
