Picture, if you will, a university. Towers of stained glass or brutalist concrete, professors in tweed, coffee queues that never move, and somewhere deep inside a committee discussing the minutes of a committee that discussed the minutes of a committee. Now ask the seemingly innocent question, “So, who owns this place?” After a brief silence you will hear a faint pop as the notion of ownership packs its bags and leaves the building.

Ownership: the Short Answer (There Isn’t Any)

Universities in the United Kingdom belong to exactly the same person who owns Stonehenge, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Shipping Forecast: nobody in particular and everyone in theory. They are corporations sole or charitable bodies conjured into existence by Royal Charter, Act of Parliament or, in more recent ventures, Companies House paperwork so thick it could stun a yak. They do not issue shares, pay dividends or hand the keys to anyone who fancies flipping them for a quick profit. Think of them as legally recognised stray cats—magnificent, slightly aloof, and impossible to sell on eBay.

A Brief Taxonomy of Academic Creatures

  1. The Charter Brigade – Oxford, Cambridge and other medieval antiques granted life by monarchs who thought indoor plumbing was sorcery. Their charters are amended only slightly faster than plate tectonics.
  2. The Polytechnic Posse – rebadged as universities in 1992 and technically “Higher Education Corporations.” Same academic aspirations, just with better signage and more acronyms.
  3. The Limited-by-Guarantee Gang – the newest kids on the quad, wrapped up in company law but still charitable, so no one gets to drive off in a Lamborghini funded by the library fines.

Each tribe has its own governance rituals, but all share one mystical vow: Thou shalt pursue education and research for the public benefit, even when the Treasury forgets thy postcode.

Enter the Office for Students (No, Really, That’s the Name)

When ministers merged the late HEFCE with a consumer watchdog, they could have christened the result the “Office for Higher Education” or even “OfUni”. Instead we got OfS, which sounds less like a regulator and more like the room where lost undergraduates go to cry. The branding is deliberate: government wanted to imply that universities are mere suppliers in a plucky student marketplace. In practice OfS spends its days checking whether institutions still meet charitable objects and haven’t accidentally set fire to their balance sheets. Imagine Ofgem, but with more Latin mottos and fewer hard hats.

Why a University Is Not a School, a College, or (Heaven Forfend) a Private Firm

Schools and further-education colleges live on a steady diet of Department-for-Education directives, Ofsted inspections and well-meaning PowerPoints about “governance maturity.” Universities, by contrast, are self-owning, self-policing and occasionally self-destructive. Their governing councils hold the deeds, write the strategies and endure the grand opera of academic senate debates. Attempting to run them like a multi-academy trust is about as sensible as herding cats with a tuba.

Conversely, treating universities as if they were listed companies—complete with quarterly earnings calls and “synergy roadmaps”—is the sort of policy idea that should come with a child-safety cap. Shareholders can flog Pizza Express if it underperforms; a university can’t flog its Chemistry Department on a wet Wednesday in Hull. Its assets are locked to charitable purpose. You might monetise car-parking, but flogging Erasmus Darwin’s microscope on Etsy is definitely off the menu.

Things a University Isn’t

  • A profit-spitting machine whose raison d’être is shareholder value.
  • A branch campus of Whitehall where ministers can rearrange the furniture on Fridays.
  • A giant school that closes at 3 p.m. and hands out gold stars for punctuality.

The Perils of Competitive-Market Daydreams

Proponents of full-throttle competition argue that if we just let price signals roam free, vice-chancellors would miraculously become Jeff Bezos in mortar-boards. Reality check: higher education markets are sticky, brand-driven and internationally entangled. A university can’t relocate to Shenzhen if the local council hikes business rates. Nor can it ruthlessly axe “unprofitable segments” without inviting a small riot on campus followed by parliamentary questions about regional levelling-up. There is, in short, no clearance aisle for astrophysics.

So What Does Work?

Governance that remembers the institution is a public-benefit charity first, educational powerhouse second and investment portfolio last. Sensible engagement with government—because shouting “academic freedom!” while ignoring audit letters rarely ends well. And, yes, trimming the management-speak (no one knows what a “transformative learner journey ecosystem” is, including the person who wrote it).

Five Blunt Take-aways for Anyone Tempted to “Fix” Universities

  1. You can’t sell them. Not even to Elon Musk.
  2. You can’t close them like branch libraries. Royal Charters have longer half-lives than plutonium.
  3. You can’t bully them into acting like widget factories. Knowledge doesn’t scale on Amazon Web Services.
  4. You can nudge them—carefully—through funding strings and regulatory carrots. Heavy sticks usually snap.
  5. Most of what looks like inefficiency is actually the cost of safeguarding independence, curiosity and the occasional Nobel Prize. Deal with it.

The Punchline

Universities are strange, ancient, gloriously inefficient organisms designed to preserve and create knowledge long after this year’s buzzwords have faded. Try to run them like a sixth-form college and you’ll crush the serendipity that makes research happen. Try to run them like Waterstone’s and you’ll soon discover that philosophy departments are spectacularly loss-making—right up until they generate the ethical framework that saves humanity from its own AI.

So the next time someone suggests “rationalising the sector,” ask whether they’ve ever tried rationalising a cathedral or a grand piano. Some things owe their lasting value precisely to the fact that nobody owns them, and universities—awkward, argumentative and occasionally sublime—are at the top of that wonderfully inconvenient list.