YES, higher education minister Jo Johnson (‘Oxford hailed as powerhouse as science park set to expand’: April 5) dropped into the Oxford Science Park to see how the Schrodinger Building is coming along and was asked about concerns that Brexit could (already is leading) lead to EU country researchers and scientists packing up their gifts and going elsewhere or to a decline in EU country research scientists coming here in the first place.

Brexit, however, is not the only threat to Oxford and other UK universities: Mr Johnson’s crude Higher Education and Research Bill is coming to its final committee stage and will soon be on the statute books.

For Oxford University, this could herald a move to private status, a UK Harvard untroubled by the destructive inanities of Mr Johnson and his Whitehall colleagues.

Oxford could make this choice.

Most universities, including Oxford Brookes, probably couldn’t.

Mr Johnson is a champion of new private providers who would offer twoyear degree courses in business studies, law, and accountancy; and under Johnson’s gold, silver, and bronze medals system for the quality of teaching, those universities who don’t make the medals will have their university (royal) charters withdrawn.

Furthermore, Government research funding has been in decline for some years, which will almost certainly mean that yet more university departments will be closed down (forever), there will be unwieldy mergers, and a commercialisation of education which will knock away what’s left of the principle that UK universities must be independent.

Jo Johnson has accused a number of UK university vicechancellors of being like bouncers, refusing entry to those they don’t like the look of.

The main deterrent to university entry, however, is the financial cost to the student, now the highest in Europe.

Lack of investment in R&D and improved facilities across the UK’s higher education estate echoes the crippling lack of investment in primary and secondary education.

Zero-hour contracts are pervasive in UK universities and will balloon in Mr John’s brave new world.

So yes, Oxford could opt out, and probably will, with the essential provision that, as at Harvard, generous scholarships would ensure that student entry is not limited to those with “private means”.

Think, though, of Oxford’s sister and brother universities which will be crushed by Jo Johnson’s wrecking educational crusade: RIP.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH

Bowness Avenue, Headington