The honest answer is that it’s hard to say exactly what would happen if a UK university did go bankrupt because it has never actually happened. The closest a UK higher education institution has come to catastrophe was arguably when, in 1987, the then University College Cardiff (UCC) was plunged into financial crisis by the Thatcher government’s dramatic cuts to university funding. But a lot has changed in terms of how UK higher education runs since the 1987 Cardiff crisis. It’s a safe bet that Braverman’s constituents include students and staff from the University of Southampton, Southampton Solent University and the University of Portsmouth. A university collapse, he fears, would prompt would-be students to worry that any institution they enrolled at might collapse too.
