The UK’s universities are still described as “world-leading”, yet the sector has rarely looked more troubled.

The target of sending half of young people into higher education has been met, with around 51% now entering by the age of 25. But more than a third of institutions reported a deficit for 2024–25, and that is forecast to rise to four in ten. The share of first-class degrees has climbed from 7% in 1993–94 to 30% today. Meanwhile a 25-year-old graduate in England can easily owe more than £50,000, and only around a third of recent students are expected ever to repay their loans in full.

In The Higher Education Delusion, edited by Professor Len Shackleton, Editorial and Research Fellow at the IEA, ten contributors ask what has gone wrong. They examine why the graduate premium has fallen as student numbers have soared, and why the student “loan” is really a badly designed tax that pushes effective marginal rates as high as 71%. They ask how heavily universities now depend on international students, and what that has cost in standards. They question whether research funded partly by student fees adds much to useful knowledge, and they trace how a political monoculture took hold on campus and spread into the wider culture. Finally, they look at how artificial intelligence could sweep away the traditional university, and what might take its place.