Universities provide higher education.    They are the topmost tier of education, offering both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and staffed by leading experts in their subjects.

This is the common sense idea.    But it is being eroded.    "Going to university" is an aspiration of the many, but places are few, and creating more is expensive.    Politicians seek to square this circle by stretching the word university to cover more and more types of institution.

The process is not new.    Remember the re-labeling of polytechnics a generation ago, or the more recent creation of the University for Industry or the NHS University (both since renamed to de-emphasise the word university)?    Why else has the government introduced two-year foundation degrees, why do they propose to extend degree awarding powers and university status to more and more bodies?

And then there are degree mills:   bogus universities that exploit legal loopholes to offer fake, or at best watered-down, degrees.    It all erodes what we understand a university to be.

Take research.    Many argue that university staff do not need to do research;   they only need to teach.    Yet, to stay at the forefront of a subject you need regular contact with others "on the front line".    And the front line is where research takes place.    Academics from “teaching only" universities are not on the front line;   they risk being left behind, or excluded from the real community of experts.

Indeed, some argue that an undergraduate degree is defined by a level of skill and knowledge which enables the degree holder to undertake research.    This in turn implies a certain length and depth of study, well beyond the reach of a two-year "foundation" degree.

Then again, the traditional notion that universities must be above a certain size has been challenged.    Small, single subject institutions could also become universities.

In a world of burgeoning knowledge, to achieve a depth of understanding in any subject requires an increasingly narrow focus.    Yet the narrower the focus, the more blinkered the view.    Concentration of expertise has to be balanced against the creative stimulation of multidisciplinary contact, the need to see the wood as well as trees.    Small, specialised universities will find it harder to achieve this balance.    Indeed, the very word itself implies universality, not a narrow specialism.

Others argue that universities are simply places where academic elites perpetuates themselves.    Dons, they claim, are uninterested in imparting real world skills to their students.

This misses the point.    Universities teach learning.    And the skill and confidence to learn for oneself comes from the study of one subject in sufficient depth that one can challenge and extend it.    Falling short of that point is a kind of failure.

Placing narrow, vocational constraints on a university education also blinkers the participants.    It inhibits the creativity and originality which are essential to a university education.

This is not to decry or deny the value of vocationally-focused courses and qualifications.    We need them;   learners need them;   the country needs them.    But providing them is not what universities are for.    Turning universities in vocational sausage machines could destroy the very excellence which makes universities distinct from other educational institutions, that makes them the top tier.