The old Soviet system of over-bureaucratisation did not die with the USSR; it transmigrated into Britain’s higher education system.
When I started lecturing nearly 40 years ago, universities were responsible to the University Grants Committee, a benign set of mandarins in London who exercised a hands-off supervision of British universities. Academics were largely free to get on with their own work, which was mainly teaching the 10 per cent of the population who went to university on a grant paid for by the state, and writing research papers and books.
