What a great way to start the day

My union, UCU has issued a special report on the effect of the government's reactionary and moronic education funding cuts. The good news is that The Hegemon isn't one of the four in serious risk of closure.

Instead, we're one of the 23 institutions at a 'high level of potential impact… 9-10 of the 12 'risk points'.

Brilliant. And here's me with a contract which expires in September. More seriously, we do a lot of good work. We provide a high standard of education, often for students who can't or won't go elsewhere: local students, ethnic minority students, the poor, mature students, students with families and working students. You don't get many of those at Oxford. In fact, let's compare: The Hegemon: 40% UK ethnic minorities. Oxford: 1 British-Caribbean student last year. Just one (and Cambridge University has no black members of the academic and technical staff).

If we get closed down, where are all these black people going to go? They've been herded into massive, teaching-led, urban institutions - partly because they're systematically disadvantaged in school too - the kind of places which don't own massive tracts of land, can't reach out to famous/rich/powerful friends for donations, and can't attract top researchers.

Simple. They won't go to university at all.

Sounds fair…

My first university was overwhelmingly white - but Bangor University is in North Wales, which has virtually no ethnic minorities other than English. Still there was a fairly substantial non-white cohort. My current employer, Wolverhampton Uni, must have one of the most diverse student populations in the country, both from British-born students and international ones - it's one of the institution's strengths, though I'm never quite sure how well the different groups mix.

In any case, we're much more welcoming than certain universities - these figures are so shocking that it can't simply be written off as a problem with school-level education of black children:

Across all years and subjects, Oxford's student population of 20,000 has around 380 students from a black background, including mixed race, of whom just 175 out of 11,900 are undergraduates.

Cambridge is no better. Perhaps it's partly explained by the greater poverty in minority groups: 40% of Cambridge and Oxford students went to private schools, despite only 7% of children attending such schools. Mmmm…egalitarian