STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITIES Personal Statement by Professor Geoffrey Alderman in response to the Report (2 August 2009) of the House of Commons’ Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Begins 1. On 17 June 2008 I delivered my Inaugural Professorial Lecture at the University of Buckingham. Entitled Teaching Quality Assessment, League Tables and the Decline of Academic Standards in British Higher Education the lecture brought together material I had collected as part of a larger inquiry into the decline of academic standards in UK universities. I concluded that “Academic standards at many British universities are in danger of collapse – and at some have already collapsed - because those responsible for them are unwilling or unable to withstand the pressures coming from the culture of league-tables that many vice-chancellors have been only too happy to embrace.” I pointed especially to the work of the so-called Joint Planning Group (1996), and I accused the members of that...