A debate in the House of Lords last week on the was secured and opened by Ruth Deech, former principal of St Anne’s College, Oxford. After further lengthy speeches by Alexandra Freeman, principal of Hertford College, Oxford, and Lionel Tarassenko, founding president of Reuben College, Oxford, David Isaac, provost of Worcester College, Oxford, noted that It was gratifying “to see Oxford so well represented”.

Indeed. But as the debate demonstrated, the pressures being felt across the sector might feel less urgent from the comfort of an Oxford common room.

The debate was highly informed, moving swiftly from the opaque notion of “affordability” to what Deech identified as a “funding and quality crisis” in the nation’s universities. Simon Stevens, Oxford-educated chair of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Cancer Research UK and King’s College London council, stated that “English universities now get £6.4 billion less for teaching than they did a decade ago”. Add to this a squeeze on international students, the new international student levy, and last year’s national insurance rise, and there are “significant grounds for concern”. Talk of our universities’ “brilliance”, he concluded, runs the risk of “resting on past glories”.

Speakers were attuned both to the impact that financial pressures are having and the ways in which they are being used as a pretext to attack particular subject areas. The Liberal Democrat life peer Shaffaq Mohammed spoke of meetings of students and staff in Sheffield, where both universities are creaking. And Isaac, who is also chair of the University of the Arts London, was one of multiple speakers to note the “recently announced deep cuts in the humanities” at the University of Exeter.

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In addition, for a passionate defence of the arts and humanities, one could hardly ask for more than the Earl of Clancarty’s contribution. These subjects, he declared, “perhaps more than others, stimulate and engender the critical thinking so necessary in our society”. One is almost moved, in the face of such words, to reassess one’s views on hereditary peers.

But it was, overall, a messy, distracted debate, reflective of the state of public discourse on UK higher education. While the issue of underfunding is so clear that it can be calculated to the nearest hundred million – and its effects on jobs in the thousands – there is always a temptation to drift on to second- or third-order topics.

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Multiple speakers declared that there are too many universities. One railed against grade inflation. More than one speculated that AI would mysteriously solve the sector’s problems. Another believed that the answer lay in greater use of teaching assistants. Why has nobody ever thought of that?

And then there was free speech, because there’s always free speech. Nigel Biggar – most recently of Christ Church, Oxford and, last year, wondrously elevated to the Lords by Kemi Badenoch to fight wokeness – declared that “too many universities have tolerated highly uncivil aggression”. In due course, Kathleen Stock became one of the very few academics – or former academics – named in the debate. The lords evidently saw less point naming the hundreds of Stock’s former colleagues at the University of Sussex who were, as the debate was taking place, living with the threat of redundancy.

What did the lords want? What were their demands? The Oxford-educated diplomat David Hannay resisted calling for “another full-scale inquiry”, settling for a conclusion that “there are quite a lot of questions that need answering”. Despite the forensic calculations of loss, there were no outright calls for increased funding. Despite the notes of regret, there were no demands for an end to job losses.

In her response, skills minister Jacqui Smith was keen to note that she was yet another Oxford alumna and went on to observe that in her two years in the job “it has become very obvious to me that there is nothing that the House of Lords likes more than a debate about higher education”.

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Smith can afford sarcasm. Who’s to challenge her in this context? She proceeded to boast of Labour’s inflation-linked increases to tuition fees from 2025-26, blithely ignoring all the ongoing problems aired in the debate. A week later, education secretary Bridget Phillipson followed up by stripping a further £50.9 million from teaching grants used to fund high-cost and priority subjects.

The lords know the problems because everybody can see the problems. Some peers are particularly astute at calculating the damage being done. Yet there was an air to this debate of a bunch of clever people discussing climate change in an air-conditioned room while it is 38 degrees outside. An air of exchanging Oxford wisdom while few academics outside Oxbridge can count their jobs as safe. An air of fiddling while Exeter burns.

is professor of Renaissance studies at the University of Exeter.