British universities have in recent years battled on multiple fronts: whether it is the issue of gender discrimination and the ubiquitous glass ceiling confronting female academics, or the ratio of working class students to bourgeoisie, the government has weighed in on each account.

Yet it is this very coddling by the government that has to date escaped scrutiny, and since it is responsible for the direction and economic circumstances of British universities, it does warrant further inspection.

Step in Simon Jenkins, journalist and former editor of The Times, who issued forth a veritable torrent of bile on Sunday; bile, it might be added, that is mightily overdue.

For a realistic insight into the contemporary status of British universities, a reader could do no better than to peruse the article; for now, a few choice snippets:

British universities had this fate coming to them since, in 1987, they capitulated to Margaret Thatcher’s de facto nationalisation under Kenneth Baker. His reform act and the abolition of the arm’s-length university grants committee was widely compared to the dissolution of the monasteries. Scholars forgot what they were about and let the piper call their tunes.

Lecturers became civil servants and research departments worked to Whitehall contracts. Academics submitted to quality control and research assessment while the Treasury ordained every penny. One anonymous vice-chancellor was quoted last week as saying, “The government gives me a cheque every year and I have a public duty to do what the government says.”

Stalin’s professors would have put it likewise. Erasmus would have fainted.  [...]

Universities have spent the past quarter-century cosying up to government in the hope of being rewarded for their servitude. This Faustian pact has been a betrayal of the academic enterprise, expressed in Cardinal Newman’s words as “self-governing communities of disinterested scholars”. In the great fees battle of the last parliament, the universities won “freedom” to charge a paltry £3,000 in return for a continuation of their teaching grant.

They have become little more than departments of state. By kowtowing to government policy, they lost the autonomy that used to be so precious to scholastic freedom. So chaotic is government research funding that university staff do too much that is too trivial and curtail their prime duty, to teach the young.

On a personal level, it is the notion of “self-governing communities of disinterested scholars” that rankles the most.

As a student, I have had the joy to be taught by lecturers who are inspired, empassioned, and driven by their subject, characteristics that in turn have ensured they remain boldest in my memory.

Alternatively, I have had the misfortune to sit through lectures in which the lecturer’s sole motivation for being there has been the wage and/or status; in turn, the lecture has been a form of torture, facilitating eye-brow cramp and lock-jaw from excessive and prolonged yawning.

To be fair, when compelled to teach a subject that I love, compared with one I detest, the disparity is equally lurid.

For many lecturers, entering academia is a passion – to begin with.

Once the endless assessments and constant chomping at the bit of competition on the side of the institution commences however, their lust for the subject diminishes into a damp squib of a bane.

Last week I met up with one of my former lecturers, one whose seminars captivated me ten years ago as a wee 17 year-old.

The lecturer I met last week was not the one I recalled; worn down by Routine Assessment Exercises and departmental chaos, she now dreads the once lively seminars, and rues the career that was entered with immense vigor.

It is a tale that is repeated in hushed tones at conferences and behind office doors, and an experience I have yet to endure.

For now, as I chafe under the yoke of position-seeking in an academic market jostling with fellow PhDs, I hold steadfast to the hope that I will find a way to remain an inspired scholar in the midst of this self-governed community.