The courses used to be fully funded by a grant here in the UK. All you needed was to have the academic credentials to get in, and that was the tough part. About 15% of people went on to higher education (in the early 80s); the theory was that over your working life, you'd more than repay to the government in taxes what was spent on your training for your reasonably "high flying" job. Which was fairly true.The wonderful thing about that was that selection was entirely on how academically competent you were (rather than practically competent, which was more for vocations and apprenticeships); it opened up social mobility quite nicely.Then more courses were added. with increasingly niche and impractical subjects, many of which had a handful of hours of lectures a week, and by the mid 90s, about 25% of the school leavers went to University. The government decided it could no longer afford to send all these people to Uni, so introduced Student Loans instead of Grant, which had the immediate effect of starting to dissuade the poorer (though sometimes academically gifted) people from going to Uni.Then after that in 1998 came tuition fees which needed to be paid (introduced by a Labour government, who were the last ones anyone would think would do this due to the chilling effect on social mobility that the extra financial encumbrance brought).As parents weren't used to the eye-wateringly high cost of higher education that existed in places like the US, there was only so much that could be politically asked of people to pay, so course fees were capped. Still too expensive for poor, and quite a millstone around the necks of recent graduates.All the increased degree taking (around 50% of the UK population now have degrees by the time they're 30) means degrees aren't worth what they were, and command far less salary, rendering them not such a great pathway (except you now almost need a degree to flip burgers in McDonalds).Seeing as there's a limited amount of people you can funnel through the degree channel, and the cap definitely hasn't been keeping up with inflation, then something needs to give. Fixed costs of buildings and utilities remain the same, so the only factor left is to reduce the courses and the academic staff involved with those (fewer courses means fewer administrators, along with fewer lecturers).I don't think most families see the allure of vastly higher tuition fees that would allow Universities to continue in their current mode, as the return on investment simply isn't there. Apprenticeships are starting to find the appeal that they used to have (two of the most successful youngsters that I know did Engineering apprenticeships, and are now on salaries not far short of mine, while I know a boatload of Degree graduates with crippling debt over their heads, and without the grounding to do a role that would pay that back in any comfortable timespan.Couple this with the financial crash of 2009 (which is having a generational financial impact) and COVID (which will definitely be having a generational financial impact), there really isn't the money anywhere to pass along to these institutions., A s the academic year in Britain limps to a close, universities look more broke than a student after a summer of Interrailing. The Office for Students, a regulator, reckons that four in ten , Spiralling costs and fewer international students are leaving universities facing an unprecedented funding crisis. The government's immigration crackdown could increase the financial pressure on.