… (or at least, getting an early night in the better to revise in the morning) I was writing a response to this article in the Times Higher Education supplement, in which Manchester University’s self-styled ‘President’ laments how wider participation (y’know, from working class kids whose parents would never have got near university) is ruining the higher education system. Even just based on articles like this, you can see why so many of our demonstrations involve chants of

Education is a right, is a right, is a right,
Education is a right, not a privelege!
Alan Gilbert is a right, is a right, is a right,
Alan Gilbert is a right right-wing bastard!

But this article wasn’t written from an ivory tower, as it were, abstracted from any concrete goings on. It was written by the person in charge of administrating the nation’s largest campus, against a backdrop of growing militant opposition to his policies. I felt it important, at stupid o’clock last night, to write a long comment putting Gilbert’s views into perspective. Since the Murdoch-owned wing of the establishment seems disinclined to give me a platform (ie. my comment has been moderated), I reproduce my intervention here:

I would like to provide a little context to this article.

If Dr Gilbert is calling for more funding to help university staff meet the demands placed upon them, then this is to be applauded. However, such a stance is hardly consistent with the spending policies he has enacted since coming to Manchester.

In the name of saving money, administrative staffing levels have been slashed, and departmental libraries have been losed down. At the same time, money has apparently been no object in throwing up expensive and unnecessary new buildings across the campus, or hiring celebrity lecturers - like the racist Martin Amis - who take a year’s salary for a few hours’ work.

It is less surprising that Dr Gilbert blames the university’s difficulties on wider participation in higher education. As one of the most prominent lobbyists for a dramatic increase in tuition fees come the government’s spending review, the formula of too high participation and too little funding serves him quite well. However, while increased participation does create certain difficulties, a shift in the priorities of both the university administration and the government nationally would easily be able to meet them.

The NUS, for example, estimates that just £2billion would be enough to put half the 18-year-olds in the country through university with substantial cost of living grants, and it would be unforgivable miserliness to sell them short when so much more is being spent on so much less.

Perhaps the most important context that needs to be added is the growing student radicalism on campus. In October, about a hundred students occupied a prestige banquet, and in April a significantly larger demonstration occupied the Arthur Lewis building - seen by many as a symbol for the university’s misplaced priorities - for several hours. Days later, at a conference entitled “education in a neoliberal world”, student activists and staff met to discuss united action in future.

Both demonstrations voiced widespread opposition to the cuts that Dr. Gilbert’s administration has implemented in Manchester - again, while forking out heavily on prestigious white elephants - and called for changes in the way higher education is funded. Namely, they called for a free education - something that was once the norm, which is economically feasible and socially necessary as it has ever been, and which is an anaethema to the likes of Alan Gilbert.

This report is not coming out in a vacuum, and I urge readers not to imagine otherwise.