Oh Jesus... can we all please get real about what “keeping the universities open” actually means?

You must know, they kept working - serving students better than this; delivering quality education without threat to health or dignity - throughout full, national lockdown. https://twitter.com/ussbriefs/status/1313948118484951042

Nobody needs to tell me about the value of student life and university networks: I did 8 years of it.

There is truly nothing like the in-person student experience... but this shit-show is truly nothing like the in-person student experience.

We hear commentators say that things should keep running normally for younger people - those least likely to die from COVID-19, and most likely to bear the brunt of economic harms. That’d be great if we could offer them normal service. We can’t. Wishing it so doesn’t make it so.

What we’re really doing is coercing those people to risk their health, sacrifice their freedom, and FFS hand over their rent money to prop up an HE system that’s been individualised and commodified by successive governments instead of treated as the public service that it is.

Who loses if universities collapse? Yes, the students. Yes, everyone whose salary is paid by them. Every landlord, every business in every university town. Every employer whose benefited from graduate skills. Everyone who’s needed a doctor. Anyone who wants the lights to stay on.

So remind me why it’s all on the students and uni staff to keep the system afloat? It would be a national disaster (not an individual one) if we let higher ed fail. Question is whether a Tory govt will make a choice that’s tough for themselves and take national responsibility.