University life in 2034 could have descended into a dystopian nightmare, where all students take concentration pills, campus bars have gone bust, and ¡°experiences purely for the sake of fun are rare¡±, a new report on the future of higher education in the UK envisages.

The scenario ¨C one of four future paths for the sector put forward in Living and Learning in 2034: a Higher Education Futures Project, from student accommodation firm Unite Group and the University Alliance mission group ¨C imagines a highly competitive society 20 years from now in which the economy has stagnated.

¡°The student wakes with the bare minimum amount of sleep,¡± his eyes bloodshot, according to the scenario penned by a current student. ¡°Focus is essential, so he starts the day by taking the concentration pills that sit by his bedside,¡± it continues.

The report warns that in this scenario, higher education could ¡°almost exclusively¡± be about training for employment and full-time degrees might take only 18 months to complete.

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In this world, most student bars have gone out of business, ¡°the clubs and societies enjoyed by previous generations have mainly fallen by the wayside¡±, experiences purely for fun are rare and ¡°large-scale social gatherings are severely limited¡±, the report adds.

There is a ¡°pronounced¡± gap between a small number of ¡°elite¡± universities and the rest, overall student numbers are down, and few go on to postgraduate education.

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This is the gloomiest of the scenarios envisaged in the report, which concludes that the system of funding for undergraduate study is a ¡°potentially unsustainable and unaffordable system in the long term¡±.

One other alternative for 2034 is a country in which employers expect students to have a ¡°rounded¡± university experience and where postgraduate study is the norm.?

david.matthews@tsleducation.com