By Sayed Alkadiri, MDXSU Vice President Business and Law

At midnight on Friday 6^th November, the government released a green paper outlining their planned changes to universities and higher education in the UK.

A green paper is a consultation document which offers individuals and organisations the chance to give feedback on government proposals. This specific green paper details the government's current thinking on how they plan to change the landscape of higher education and how universities operate.

You can read the green paper yourself here, or click here to read our full response as a Students' Union.

What is clear is that the measures announced in the green paper are another roll of dice in the marketisation of our education. We ran a word count for the following words in the paper, and here are some striking numbers; 

• 13 mentions of the terms ‘competition/competitive’ compared to 4 mentions of ‘teachers’.
• 27 mentions of ‘value for money’ compared to 1 mention of the ‘student voice'.
• 27 references to ‘what employers want form higher education’ compared to 2 mentions each for mature and part time students.

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This exposes the green paper and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for what they are: tools to turn the education system into a functioning market, and our education into a product to be damagingly sold and ineptly measured.

Sorana Vieru, NUS Vice President Higher Education has said; “We need a robust collective response to this - as the famous quote goes: if we don't stand for something, we fall for anything”. And I wholeheartedly agree, so that’s why Middlesex Students' Union will support the NUS ‘Quality Doesn’t Grow on Fees’ Campaign.

Together we will make the arguments for why these are not the measures that will improve teaching quality, and will mobilise and defend education as a public good that is accessible for all.

For more information about that please feel free to get in touch with me or visit this link to see more.