“Under the old system, there were separate ‘pots’ for research and teaching – some money for research; some money for each student you had to teach. Under the new system , there is no pot for research (at least for the arts and humanities): the money must come out of student fees. This transforms the operations of the university – and much for the worse. While in the old system, there was no particular incentive to increase your student numbers (and, in fact, an incentive for the government to limit them), under the new one, there is an incentive and even necessity to attract as many as possible. So whereas in the past universities could concentrate on teaching and research, now they spend a huge amount of their time and resources on a perpetual scramble for students. This competition has only grown more cut-throat since the cap on student numbers was lifted, which meant that more prestigious universities could hoover up more, leaving others to fight over the shrinking remainder. “Mean...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51