Education means drawing out as well as pouring in. We report today how further education colleges are taking this platitude literally. They are drawing out the production of own-brand products, from fine wine to gourmet cheeses. For example, Plumpton College in Sussex offers Britain’s only full-time wine production degree course. So it has to provide grapes and viticultural equipment for its students. It began ten years ago in a garage, with two bottles from Boots and grapes from the local farmer. Then it decided to market its own campus-bottled wine. This sold like supermarket virtual fizz. So now the college farms a 40-acre vineyard, owns pressing-edge machinery, and produces 23,000 bottles of Plumpton Dernier Cru a year. The entire vintage of its top wine is bought by a famous restaurant.
Nothing new in universities turning the scientific and technological discoveries made by their staff and students into commercial enterprises. They need the cash. Why should somebody else reap the vintage? The monks of the Carthusian university at Grand Chartreuse have supported themselves on their elixir of long life for centuries. People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity. The religious system that produced green chartreuse can never really die.
Nothing new in getting students to work as slave labour, and pay for the privilege. Wackford Squeers practised it at Dotheboys Hall. His pupils learnt to spell the words, c-l-e-a-n, and w-i-n-d-e-r, and then put their scholarship into practice. Today’s methods are more refined. They remove the slur from “academic” as useless. And they let apprentice wine-tasters practise the second most popular college activity.