What does the future hold?

The sad reality is that unless they are stopped, the ever-expanding number of managers - few of whom have direct experience of working in universities or education before being parachuted into to an overpaid job - will destroy everything that was ever good about UK higher education.

That is the UK higher education that you, the UK taxpayer, pays for.

We see it already. As institutions race to make savings to save the bloated salaries of executive, they start to see academic staff salaries and research expenditure as 'costs' that are lost to a black hole. In their mind, there is no reason why teaching needs to be delivered by an expert lecturer with many years of experience. Why pay £55k per year for a lecturer, when you can take their lecture notes and give them to a freshly graduated PhD student on an insecure temporary contract? When that student gets fed up of no job security - hire another one. Easy!

This has already started - we are seeing serious academic jobs being devalued and advertised as insecure hourly contracts in UK universities. Do you think that your fees should pay for a proper, experienced, expert academic - or the university equivalent of a supply teacher?

The consequence of this approach to university education is easy to predict, and in many cases already visible:

• The continued slide of UK universities down the international league tables.

• Brain drain as all our top researchers and academics move abroad.

• Our graduates not being competitive with those from the EU, US, and Asia.

It does not have to be this way. UK universities were once the envy of the world - and they still could be, if we get our priorities right. Aside from Oxbridge and a very few others - the majority are engaged in this counterproductive race to the bottom.

What if we said no?

We could say no. We do the work in universities. You pay our salaries, either through tuition fees or taxation. We think you should be paying for excellence, not mediocrity driven by managerial short-termism. They need us much more than we need them.

We could all stand up for a future driven not by short-term profit, but by the desire for long-term excellence.

Help us fight back.