Free market & hope
Education Business, Education Reform, HE, In The News, Media Watch, Politics Monday, July 26th, 2010
The announcement of a new private university in the UK doesn’t come as much surprise.
Any government, especially a coalition, will shirk responsibility for its decisions when it can lest it be saddled with something that it can’t shift come coalition-meltdown and fresh elections.
The tired mantra of the free market is a trusty friend at such a time. It has never been proven either way that this causes a rise in quality. Intuitively, it just sounds good especially when the media do little more than lap up press releases and reshape them as their own.
The fact that this new development in free market innovations comes at a time when it’s now known that other privatisations (gas, water, electricity etc) have not lead to the expected number of positive improvements and the fact that costs never really seem to fall (IT projects, rail privatisation etc).
This is evidently not important to UK journalists. It is lucky that others are around to do their job properly.