Higher education is in the news again. The government has promised to cap numbers on what its ministers describe as ‘rip-off’ university degrees that don’t lead to a well-paid, highly skilled job. Described by some commentators as ‘a dismally narrow and instrumental view of higher education’, it is intriguing that when challenged the government was not able to offer any particular examples. 

The current state of play provokes some reflection on The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman, who was Vicar of St Mary’s from 1828-1843. Newman’s work is a clear expression of the principles of a liberal education. I suspect that he would have been appalled by the thought that the value of education should be measured solely in terms of its economic benefits. For Newman, there had to be a moral dimension: ‘If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a person a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches them to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.’ 

In his book, Speaking of Universities, the Cambridge academic Stefan Collini notes that Newman’s book has been followed by a steady stream of books and essays addressing the same topic. There is a recurrent, almost repetitive, pattern: a protest against the current subordination of universities to economic or other utilitarian purposes. Again and again, the ‘ideal’ is contrasted with the ‘instrumental’ understanding of higher education. Collini asks: ‘why is it that all the celebrated statements seem to be on just one side of this divide? Has no deathless prose been written about the aims of servicing the economy or training the workforce, and is that because the forces of social and economic change are seen as their own vindication, not in need of any such rhetorical assistance?’ 

Certainly, with changes in the world of work, questions about the role of artificial intelligence, a bewildering array of questions about human identity, and the extraordinary developments in medical and scientific research, we need to improve the quality of the conversation about the role of Universities. Newman would have expected nothing less.