A couple of weeks ago I consciously tried to stop myself from using the term “unprecedented” because I’d used it such an extraordinary number of times during this crisis. But in response to overnight announcements, I must use it again, even though there is also a familiarity about them.

The announcements were a response from the Department for Education to the “bid” from Universities UK for a £2 billion bailout of universities and to a consultation by the Office for Students to concerns about provider behaviour in the competitive higher education market.

Both announcements had a feel of the familiar to anyone with any experience in the further education sector in recent years - and that is extraordinary because it is happening to universities.

Background: HE institutions could be fined £500,000

Coronavirus: NUS calls for £60m student hardship fund

Long read: How to spend £1.8bn on college estates and buildings?

If you look at the DfE announcement, the “package” is a long way from what was asked for, with universities able to access the job retention scheme and have some student tuition fees and a small amount of research money paid earlier than normal. In return for that, the DfE has decided to cap student numbers and promised to establish a new restructuring facility for any universities that get into financial trouble.

Coronavirus and the stability of higher education

The OfS launch of a “consultation on the integrity and stability of the English higher education sector” was perhaps even more incredible, with the regulator proposing to take enormous strides, temporarily, to intervene on behalf of student interests. Some commentators have seen that as an attack on institutional autonomy; something that would have been extraordinary before this crisis.

The list of “bad behaviours” that might result in an OfS sanction is incredible in its own right, because it surely should not require a regulator to tell institutions not to seek an unfair advantage over other providers by making misleading statements about them. Extraordinary and surely a clear indicator of the dangers of competition within education.

Both announcements have my support. It would be wrong to simply bail out universities, as I set out in this column last week. The fragility of the university funding system, heavily reliant on overseas student income, has been exposed by this crisis, as has the underlying failure of competition to help ensure quality for students. The remedy is surely not to simply prop up every institution until that reliance and competition can be re-established. And certainly not when half the domestic population has no hope of accessing higher education and so many adults get a raw deal from the lack of investment in their opportunities.

The challenge for universities

That’s not to downplay the challenges for universities. Each one will be facing enormously challenging times, as has every college for the past decade. We need colleges and universities to thrive and none can be sure of that at the moment. The risks are high, leading to one previous HE minister, Chris Skidmore, taking to Twitter to ask whether any university will be allowed to collapse.

It’s a good question and the simple answer is that no minister will allow a university to fail, in the same way that ministers, when I was a senior civil servant in the 2000s, would not let a college fail.  When it comes down to it, the interests of students prevail. Quite right, too. But with what strings attached is the more interesting question. In the college world, all of this is all too familiar, with the decade of austerity leading to big reductions in the numbers of colleges, high numbers of mergers, low staff pay and college restructuring and redundancies commonplace.

I hope that history does not repeat itself in the university sector. I don’t want to see universities suffer in the way that colleges have. We need to learn that institutions like universities and colleges matter to their communities and we should invest in them to help the recovery that we all want to see. This has to be the time to make more profound structural changes if not nationally, then certainly locally with more joined-up thinking and a restructuring of the post-18 landscape.

I’m not optimistic it will happen, but I am hopeful. We need leaders across the board and in government to step back, take a long, calm breath and work together for the collective good. It could happen and it should happen. It would be great to see and I know that at AoC we’ll be fighting for it to happen.

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges