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You will not publish a more important article on the future of British higher education than Michael Loughlin's piece on the takeover of universities by management "science".

I agree with his two central charges. First, that the claim to be able to promote the "assurance" of "quality" is unfounded, and, second, that academics' failure to challenge that claim means they have accepted a level of intellectual reasoning to do with the way they are managed that is lower than most would accept in their own disciplines.

As in the old Eastern bloc, few believed in the ideology except the party managers, but everyone went through the motions, regardless. Are there signs of an underground opposition beginning to form... and do we have the time?

Robert Colles
Department of economic and social science
University of Leicester