As the country goes to the polls, there is a brief moment to reflect on what has gone before, and to look ahead at what might come next.
On the retrospective, perhaps the best way to start is to ask a question: was the last government – at least in its recent iterations – the worst ever as far as universities are concerned?
Let’s review the evidence. This was the government that took us out of the European Union, and then played politics with schemes as vital to the success of UK research as Horizon Europe.
It was the government that repeatedly used universities as a proxy battlefield for the culture wars, and relentlessly talked them down as purveyors of rip-off degrees.
And it was the government that ignored the plight of financially stricken universities, and then threw petrol on the flames by looking to squeeze international student flows.
The list could go on.
You could add the damage done to universities, their staff and students, by the cost-of-living crisis and inflation exacerbated by the mini-budget from 50-day prime minister Liz Truss.
Or the breakdown in trust and respect, exemplified by science secretary Michelle Donelan being successfully sued by a professor she had falsely accused of supporting Hamas.
It has, to coin a phrase, been an omnishambles.
What comes next is harder to say.
In the run-up to the general election, there has been a bit of a policy vacuum: Labour is saying as little as possible on most topics, and the Conservatives have scant electoral interest in higher education.
Filling that void to a certain extent have been political big beasts of the past, who – freed from the need to talk only about the topics that it is assumed will sway voters – have more scope to address the issues that actually matter to the future of the country.
Speaking on the BBC, Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of New Labour, said the last government had “been sitting on its hands for years watching the financial models of universities being crippled, denigrating universities, driving away foreign students that bring in such revenues – they refused to acknowledge that there even is a financial crisis”.
While universities “have a responsibility for managing their finances better”, he said, the next administration “has got to recognise that our universities are a tremendous asset…absolutely central to our future prosperity”.
Meanwhile, William Hague, a former Conservative Party leader, has pushed the next government to put science and technology at the heart of its plans for pretty much everything.
Writing in The Times, Hague argues that if Keir Starmer is indeed the next prime minister, he must understand that “all his hopes and plans depend on Britain being a leading country in science and technology, and that he will have to think about and act on that every single day he might spend in Downing Street”.
A plan for the country that relies on faster economic growth to pay for reform and investment is particularly dependent on innovation, he writes, which means doing everything possible to encourage university spin-offs, grant visas to the best scientists, push changes in education and invest in R&D.
It is a theme that picks up on the work already carried out by University of Oxford vice-chancellor Irene Tracey on improving the country’s innovation culture, which she elaborated on in her contribution to Times Higher Education’s recent feature on big ideas for the next government.
So there are ideas out there, and waymarkers to point whoever finds themselves in No 10 (and, crucially, in the key ministerial posts) in the right direction.
The hope must be that a new administration – particularly if it is a Labour government coming in after a decade and a half out of power – has licence, energy and vision to do things differently.
Recognising, acknowledging and treating universities as a crucial part of the answer to the problems facing the country would be a very good starting point.
It would be wise not to hope for miracles – anyone looking for those will be disappointed, and the recent experience of universities in Australia under a Labor government shows that a shift to the left does not necessarily mean that universities will get everything their own way.
But better stewardship of a sector that wants to be part of the solution, and has enormous capacity to deliver for the country, should not fall into the category of divine intervention.
And even if we are tempering expectations, surely things can’t get much worse.
