Barbarians at the gate

If you ask any politician active in Cornwall over the past 12 years what has been the most significant development in the local socio-economic infrastructure I suspect most will answer "a university."

Prior to 2003, Cornwall suffered a "brain drain" of bright young people who were either not interested in or able to study at the Camborne School of Mines or Falmouth College of Art. Thanks to a £50 million (largely European) investment, as a university college, Famouth has been able to award degrees in a wide variety of subjects since 2005.

Perhaps we too easily forget such hard-fought and recent victories. For surely the true mark of a civilisation in decline is that it teaches its children less than their parents. And yet for all the huffing and puffing in the news today about 7% or 8% cuts to the defence budget, next week we are likely to see cuts of nearly 80% (yes, that is 80%, not a typing error) to public funding for universities.

Abolition of the cap on tuition fees, allowing an American-style free-for-all (who can afford it) market in university places, is unlikely to benefit Cornwall. The scramble for places at the older established universities will become ever more acute, leaving Falmouth to think up new ideas just to attract lower-fee undergraduates - as it joins the ranks of the "secondary-moderns" of higher education.

Next weeks' public spending review looks as if it could force some universities to close or merge. Maybe Falmouth could seek shelter under the wing of Exeter, I don't know. I wonder how many column-inches, or broadcast-minutes, will be devoted to higher education, in next week's wall-to-wall coverage of the spending review?

I should perhaps declare an interest here, in that I have two teenage daughters who seem likely to be the last of their generation to get interest-free student loans to help them through higher education. Yet I remember the huge fuss when student loans replaced student grants - that seemed bad enough at the time. As I never went to university myself (neither did my parents, or grandparents) it matters very much to me that my children should.

What next? A lowering of the school-leaving age? More vocational courses for 16-year-olds who don't know what they want to do? Why stop there......isn't there a clear demand for nimble youngsters, keen to work for low wages, sweeping Cornwall's chimneys?