TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION: Growing English deficits trigger sustainability fears

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Andy Westwood, professor of government practice at the University of Manchester, highlighted the fact that “some of the universities suffering most – in recruitment or financial health – from the higher education market” are located “among the ‘left behind’ communities exposed by the Brexit vote”.

He added that, in higher education policy, the Department for Education, the Office for Students and UK Research and Innovation “don’t think in geographical terms or about the geopolitical consequences of the Brexit vote”.

Professor Westwood said that “in a weak local economy you’re going to depend on big public institutions such as universities and colleges acting as anchor institutions much more than in better-off communities. But all the economic challenges are likely to make it harder for these institutions to compete in national market-based systems – harder to recruit students and staff, harder to get research income and so on.

“As a result they get smaller, close departments and campuses and the economic gaps between them and larger, more successful cities – and their institutions – just get wider and wider.”