The Guardian reports that, in the next two or three years, 50 “higher education providers” — 24 of them within a year — could (just like the providers of other goods-and-services) close down or, as Sally Weale, its education correspondent puts it, “risk exiting the market”. Sally thinks — that is, takes it for granted — that this a bad and unhappy circumstance, to be spoken of as ‘collapse’, ‘threat’, ‘turmoil’, ‘worry’, ‘disorder’, ‘fear’. And no doubt, from the point of view of the providers themselves, that is just what it is. What provider of goods-and-services — no matter what — wants to be forced to exit its market? It is a poor look-out for all the employees thrown out of work, and can’t be a good look on the managers’ own CVs. And then there are all those job-seekers the provider provided with qualifications. If their provider goes bust and out of existence what does that suggest to potential employers about the worth of the goods they were provided with? From the point of view of everyone whose interest is bound up with the provider’s, its exiting the market is, as Sally suggests, very bad news.
