The scramble to recruit students through the clearing system is reportedly fiercer than ever this year as UK universities struggle to shore up their flagging finances with ever more bums on seats. And as part of that scramble, each university talks up not only the quality of its courses and the employment rates of its graduates but also the unforgettable experience its students will supposedly enjoy while on campus.

But such promises are becoming increasingly difficult to keep. Resources are dwindling, governments show no inclination to inject significant amounts of extra funding and there are only so many hours in the day that overstretched and demoralised staff, professional or academic, can be expected to give.

Many commentators have noted that the UK¡¯s plate-glass university expansion in the 1960s entrenched a model based on Oxbridge ¨C but with significantly fewer resources. Students were led to see universities as a mixture of boarding schools and holiday camps, with lavish sports facilities, increasingly luxurious accommodation and high levels of personal attention to their health and welfare. They were offered a life of comfort well beyond that of their contemporaries in employment or vocational training. Their teaching would be equally personalised, in small groups or even one-to-one. ?

But as this sub-Oxbridge model becomes ever more unsustainable, it is surely time to re-examine what UK universities must do and what is merely nice to have. The promised experience must be adjusted to match the resources available.

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It is well past time for a new Robbins Review. The sentiments of Robbins¡¯ landmark 1963 report on the future of higher education were worthy: the purpose of universities should be ¡°instruction in skills; the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women; to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship¡±. But are they still relevant and achievable? If not, what options might exist for a conscious dilution?

We could do a lot worse than start by looking to the mass higher education systems of Europe and the BRICS nations. There, accommodation is often left to the private market, social providers or student-led cooperatives ¨C if it is needed at all; many students attend local universities and continue to live at home. Sporting facilities are a matter for student associations based on voluntary membership rather than general subsidies. Health and welfare support amount to limited add-ons to national health systems.

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And there is no pretence at customised educational provision and assessment. Mass universities provide mass teaching and accept high attrition rates. There is no sense that just because a student has been admitted, the university is obliged to deliver a degree to them. Outcomes might still reflect social inequality, but entry is at least opened wide.

The primary business of the mass university is teaching. This is not expected to subsidise research, which bears its own costs through joint appointments and, often, parallel institutions. High-cost subjects like STEM, sports or art and design are hived off to specialist providers, public or private, with matching fees or earmarked funding rather than sustained by hidden cross-subsidies from student fees in social sciences and humanities.

51¹ú²úÊÓƵ teachers are expected to maintain their expertise through personal scholarship but not to be driven frantic by the pursuit of top-up funds for research or teaching innovation in addition to their regular duties. Nor are they burdened with expectations about tutorial responsibilities. Their job is to teach classes, not prevent suicides.

Different mass systems exhibit different mixes of these elements. But they share a commitment to a more limited institutional responsibility for student life and well-being and a bounded role for their employees.

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Of course, any UK university that started down this path under its own steam would place itself at an immediate competitive disadvantage. We need to move en masse. If ministers will not lead, the Office for Students must take the initiative and promote public and political debate on what precisely England ¨C and perhaps the UK more widely ¨C should expect from its universities given the apparently ineluctable decline in the real value of the unit of resource.

Of course, the OfS was established in 2018 as a market regulator, replacing the quasi central planner that was the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Robbins rejected the model introduced at the same time in California, of an explicitly hierarchical system with a well-defined structure of ladders and bridges between the various levels, from community colleges to elite research institutions). Planning may not be fashionable at this political moment, but it is surely preferable to a chaotic market where national priorities and regional access are derailed by transient student choices.

A market regulator still has a natural role to play in the envisaged process of reflection, communicating to students what is reasonably achievable with the resources available; communicating to government what it might realistically expect (particularly given the hidden subsidies to STEM teaching and research), and communicating to universities the minimum standards to which they will be held, consistent with their funding.

The UK¡¯s four national systems might pick and mix from a review in ways appropriate to each, but the review would be better carried out in a deliberate and self-conscious fashion. The OfS is uniquely placed to lead it, and it should be the first item on the agenda for its new chairman, Edward Peck.

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If the challenge is ducked, the consequences for universities, staff and, ultimately, students will be intolerable.

?is emeritus professor of sociology at?Nottingham Trent 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ?and emeritus professor and founding director of the Institute of Science and Society at the?51¹ú²úÊÓƵ of Nottingham.

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