LAST month the Parliamentary Education Committee was warned by the Office for Students (OfS), the higher education regulator for England, that it fears 24 higher education facilities are at risk of insolvency and closure within 12 months.
The OfS also warned that 45% of higher education providers could be facing a financial deficit for 2025/26.
The Education Committee responded to these warnings saying: ‘The higher education sector in England is facing a financial crisis that now poses a real risk of institutional insolvency.’
It continued: ‘We heard compelling evidence that, without urgent and coordinated action, there is a clear possibility of a university closing.’
The committee noted that there is currently ‘no clearly understood protocol for how the government might respond to a situation of a provider at risk of insolvency’ calling it ‘a very serious problem’.
The Labour government, according to the committee, plays a ‘significant, even prominent role in the financial health of the higher education sector’ citing the continued attack on international students who have been ‘heavily affected’ by changes in immigration rules designed to stop international students who these institutions have relied upon to provide huge amounts of fees.
Labour’s response to this crisis has been to increase student fees.
Meanwhile, the universities themselves have embarked on a lengthy campaign to ‘save’ themselves from financial collapse by attacking the jobs of their staff, which has provoked a massive resistance.
On Monday, the staff at Goldsmiths University of London walked out on an indefinite strike over management imposing a 100% pay deduction over their participation in action short of a strike.
Members of the University and College Union (UCU) refused to mark all work and assessments over management’s threat to slash up to 269 professional services staff and academics – over one-in-five of the workforce – with further cuts to academic staff slated to start from September.
Goldsmiths management reacted by enforcing a 100% deduction in pay despite the fact that staff performed all their other normal duties.
UCU reported: ‘Worryingly, university management has also reportedly issued an ultimatum to students, threatening to ban them from campus for protesting in solidarity with staff.’
The refusal of UCU members at Goldsmiths to cave in to savage cuts demanded by a desperate management is the latest in a wave of industrial action by university staff across the UK.
UCU members in 58 education institutions walked out in a coordinated three-day strike from March 21 to 25, 2026 over pay and job insecurity.
At the recent UCU Higher Education sector conference a motion was passed, amended by London Metropolitan University (which is one of the many university branches on strike in local disputes over job cuts) calling for the union to unite all these actions and call coordinated national strike action across the country.
Meanwhile, the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange has come up with its own solution to the crisis, calling for Labour ministers to cut university places by a third. This was seized upon by the Tories and the Reform Party as the way forward – simply cut the number of students by closing down courses and ‘underperforming’ universities.
The right-wing Labour Peer Maurice Glasman went even further, telling the Daily Telegraph that Labour should ‘shut down’ half of the universities.
Crushed by the economic crisis, bankrupt British capitalism has no alternative other than to impose cuts on workers coupled with the demand for university closures and a return to the days when higher education was restricted to the children of the rich.
UCU members are fighting for the gains in education made by the working class in the past and they must not be allowed to fight alone.
The only solution to this crisis is for the UCU and the entire working class to unite and force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the collapsing Labour government and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers, abolish tuition fees, and restore free state education as part of a planned socialist economy.