Imagine... a world in which British universities went bust

Oh no...

Last Sunday The Guardian reported on the “cash crisis” facing universities.

It’s “so serious that the next government will have to urgently raise tuition fees or increase funding to avoid bankruptcies within two years.”

Moreover:

Two former universities ministers, the Conservative peer David Willetts and Labour’s Alan Johnson, plus the Labour peer Peter Mandelson, a former business secretary, all said there needed to be increased funding for universities as a matter of urgency.

Oh no! It sounds devastating. Especially when you look at this list of what the UK might lose without spending more:

There’d be fewer doctors

Everyone knows the UK has a shortage of doctors. If there’s an emergency on a flight or a plane, it’s guess if someone will answer the call.

That’s why need to invest in more not fewer doctors.

Luckily that’s what we’ve been doing. Take Dr Rachel Hann (below), a “cultural scenographer” whose taxpayer-funded (£185,627) research, Trans Performance Now: Glitching cisgenderism, will greatly contribute to society.

Then there’s doctor-in-training Victoria Burgher, currently undertaking a taxpayer-funded PhD in “Crafting counterhegemony: using porcelain to interrogate ideological Whiteness” at the University of Westminster.

Cry “I need a doctor” and an expert in “hegemonic whiteness as a legacy of empire” will be there.

We’d be less informed about pregnant men

Can you imagine if Leeds and Sheffield University hadn’t received £668,000 total from taxpayers to undertake the vital project below - so complex that it required almost four years of research?

Without universities, how would we know how men feel about their pregnancies?

Moreover, we’d never know that trans breast milk is just as good as normal breast milk

Kate Luxion MFA MPH LCCE, who appeared on the BBC (above), is a shining example of the talent produced by universities.

Forget a “man on the moon” - welcome to the “lad who lactates”.

Appearing on the BBC, Luxion told us that trans milk is even “at least” as good at “if not higher quality” than its natural equivalent.

Luxion’s research continues to this day at UCL - funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (aka taxpayers). I sure am glad to hear more from “them”.

MPs would have fewer second jobs

Take former universities minister Chris Skidmore, who received £40,000 per year from the Oxford International Education Group, which offers “routes to higher education through partnerships with universities across the UK, Canada and the United States.”

Why shouldn’t Conservative MPs take money from the sectors they manage? It sounds like a great way to come up with these insightful takes:

We’d miss protestors

I’m just not sure Extinction Rebellion and Youth Demand would be able to satiate the nation’s demand for angry twentysomethings who haven’t washed.

Who would warn us that plays are dangerous?

Without universities we wouldn’t know which plays to avoid or mentally prepare for.

Personally I was glad to find out that Titus Andronicus contained violence. Before the University of Cambridge’s trigger warning below, I’d expected something like the 80s film Parenthood with Steve Martin.

Who would make toolkits for sex workers?

Thanks to the trailblazer that is Leicester University, students now have toolkits and resources for sex work; a trend that has caught on.

Leicester was even generous enough to start a campaign to support sex workers. Chief Executive of its union reassured that the university was “made up of a diverse range of lived experiences” and its Vice-Chancellor pledged commitment “to ensuring that any students who are sex workers feel supported and valued as part of the Leicester community.”

Fewer universities means less research into porn

What would the UK do without the £841,830 taxpayer-funded research below?

Or this project?

And can you conceive a world in which we don’t have the expertise of Professor John Mercer, Director of Researcher Education and Development, Professor of Gender and Sexuality?

He has been researching gay porn since 2012 - but clearly there’s more to know, hence why we need to give our full backing to The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000.

I’m sure, after reading all this, you’ll agree that we should definitely throw another few billion at these institutions.