Higher education : Change, churn and challenges

This introductory chapter discusses how mass expansion has produced an increasingly diverse university sector in the UK. Though there are commonalities when it comes to certain policy trends and pressures (e.g. the Teaching Excellence Framework [TEF], the Research Excellence Framework [REF]), the sector as a whole is arguably more diverse and divided than ever before. Some commentators suggest that this landscape constitutes a contemporary crisis of meaning, though such assertions might be misplaced; in one respect, such alarmist descriptions are neither contemporary nor quite accurate – a glance through history shows us a fairly consistent ongoing struggle with defining the purpose of higher education in changing social circumstances. Virginia Sapiro (2015) suggests that a discourse of crisis has in fact characterised university education for several hundred years now. The chapter argues that change and churn in higher education may just be constant symptoms of a system in perpetual flux, driven by competing and evolving philosophies, expectations and demands.