Our system of higher education needs radical reform

Fifty years ago, in my interview for a university place I was asked, “What are universities for?” Candidates for any university admissions process this year would struggle to find any answers in the government’s white paper on “Post-16 education and skills”, published last October. They would have more luck if they turned instead to John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University, which includes the lectures he delivered in 1852 as a prelude to launching the Catholic University of Ireland. Newman distinguished a university from a research institute on the one hand and a correspondence course or exam factory on the other. A university is also not a convent and not a seminary. The wisdom of the lectures is distilled in one beautiful sentence where Newman insists that a “university is an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill”. No wonder that, in 2025, Pope Leo XIV declared St John Henry Newman to be a Doctor of the Church and co-patron saint of education with St Thomas Aquinas.

Get Instant Access

Continue Reading

Register for free to read this article in full

REGISTER

Subscribe for unlimited access

SUBSCRIBE NOW

From just £37.50 quarterly

  Print copy of The Tablet delivered directly to your door.
  Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
  Access to the weekly digital copy of The Tablet.
  Full access to The Tablet’s archive – over 180 years of back issues.

Already a subscriber? Login