The Universities’ Doom Spiral – Can Britain avert disaster?
Oh God, What Now?
Podmasters
4.6 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Abby's just woken up. It's 731 and she's forgotten to ring the doctor. |
| 0:05.0 | There's no point ringing now. She needs to get to work. But she's not worried. |
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| 0:30.2 | Sophie Tom and the kids are standing by the luggage carousel, waiting for Sophie's bag. |
| 0:34.0 | Looks like she's going to be wearing Tom's clothes for a week, but she's not worried. |
| 0:37.6 | Their HSBC Premier bank account has comprehensive worldwide travel insurance that covers them, the kids and grandkids, if they had them. |
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| 0:52.1 | Apply with £100,000 annual income or £100,000 savings or investments with HSBC UK |
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| 0:58.8 | H. Restrictions and Limitations apply. |
| 1:28.3 | Hello and welcome to Oh God What Now. I'm Ros Taylor. Today, tuition fees are up again. Loans are bleeding graduates dry. Students are turning to AI to help them do their work. And now universities are closing down department after department as they struggle to make ends meet. |
| 1:33.6 | What's happening to British universities? And does doing a degree make sense if you're not sure whether you need one? With us to talk about it is a special guest, Glenn O'Hara, |
| 1:38.5 | who's Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brooks University and is an expert |
| 1:43.3 | on the crisis unis find themselves in. Hello, Glenn. Hi, how are you? I'm good. You've got a new book out about the Blair era? I have got a new book out about the Blair era, which does an immense damage to my mental health, because it was a time of fatness in universities, which, when they looked fantastic and they were expanding. So there's a challenge for you. |
| 2:01.9 | Well, we're going to talk about what new labour did and didn't do for universities later on. |
| 2:05.8 | Also with us, it's oh god, what now regular and award-winning housing journalist Hannah Fern. Hello, Hannah. |
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