Ellie Bothwell, rankings editor, has given the best assessment on Higher Education, globally perceived, at least in the historical moment we have. From Ellie Bothwell, This week in higher education, The Times Higher Education Supplement (THE), daily email, 28 August 2025:
It is a troubling sign of the times, and the crisis that many fear higher education is in, that several of our analyses this week relate to the theme of university collapse.
An essay on the massification of UK higher education argues that “the current state of UK universities seems like a very bad deal for those involved, bad for society and ultimately unsustainable”, with high participation rates and declining income levels creating a system that author Lincoln Allison compares to that of the Soviet Union.
“The reasons to fear the collapse of the system, however, are not that it’s bad or unfair but that it’s unfundable,” writes the emeritus reader in politics at the University of Warwick. “The university sector has been bloated to an unsustainable level and is now bound to decline; the questions are by how much and how will it happen.”
Another sector facing decline is the US, where bigger class sizes, fewer departments and reduced choice for students could become the norm as universities adapt to a harsher funding environment under president Donald Trump. The universities of Oregon, Nebraska and Chicago are among the latest to announce layoffs, course closures and cuts to admissions.
“A liberal education is simply not valued the way it was 20 years ago, let alone 50 years ago,” says one scholar.
If that all sounds a little bleak then today’s feature on AI has a more hopeful conclusion. Many fear algorithms will displace academics, but Martin A. Mills, chair in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, explains why bots will not wipe out universities and why universities must remain a key source of human agency, knowledge and creativity. “An AI-informed future will require more of what universities presently provide, not less.”
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Neville Buch
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