Explore the argument
What would fix it?
Sustainable reform must address the linked problems of funding, incentives, regulation, collaboration and failure.
The key pointFixing one price or adding one rescue fund cannot by itself repair a system whose parts transfer risk to one another.
There is no single switch that restores the system to health. Reform has to make explicit choices about who pays, what universities are expected to provide and what happens when an institution is no longer viable.
A joined-up settlement
A credible approach must consider teaching funding, research cost recovery, student support, international recruitment, capital, regulation and mechanisms for collaboration or exit.
Trade-offs, not slogans
Every option distributes cost and risk differently among students, taxpayers, institutions, staff and local communities.
This page will eventually compare reform options against a transparent set of tests: adequacy, stability, fairness, autonomy, accountability and political feasibility.
Try it yourself
Can you fix the universities? The Regulated to Fail Policy Simulator lets you change the rules — the fee cap and its indexation, the international student levy and visa rules, what research grants pay, the burden of regulation, the VAT penalty on collaboration — and run the English system to 2036. It shows what each choice does to providers’ finances, to students, research, subjects and regions, and to the taxpayer, and what it costs. It is a model, not a forecast: every assumption and its source is published.