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In office, we in the Labour Party took the devilishly difficult decisions needed to revive and rebuild our science base and replenish the funds for universities. The result? A system that has never, ever been stronger.
So it's frankly alarming to see the clear and present danger that this magnificent forest is being poisoned at the roots. Why am I so alarmed? For three big reasons:
1) The financing system is slowly going bust
New cuts have been handed down – hurting the poorest students and risking them turning to loan sharks to pay their way – all to finance a dogma that puts private colleges at the front of the queue.
Unfettered, unplanned, uncontrolled access to the student loan system now means students at St Patrick's International College (yes, the one with a designation suspended by BIS in November) now draws down more funding for teaching than the London School of Economics.
But worse, the write-off of student loans has now spiralled to over 40%. David Willetts, a man I like, has not ruled out the write-off reaching 50%.
In other words, it'll be more expensive than the old system despite the government having tripled fees. That, I'm afraid, is not a system fit for the future. And please don't be fooled by the promises of the autumn statement. There are huge holes in the government's projections for extra money from selling the student loan book – in fact the funding gap may be as high as £1.3bn by 2017. That's a large black hole by anyone's reckoning.
2) Immigration policy is damaging our global reputation
I'm worried that our world class system needs to draw on the world's best talent and that's being damaged by a Little England immigration policy.
Everywhere I go, vice-chancellors tell me about the difficulty of assembling global research teams. This summer, I was emailed by visiting students who had read my book, Turning to Face the East, to tell me how they had to queue for six hours outside a police station in the rain to register their presence here. What kind of signal, they asked, is Britain trying to send?
Is it any surprise that despite a global boom in the higher education market, we now have falling numbers of international students? This is hugely damaging for the short term, medium term and long term, and it's why our shadow home secretary had said it's ridiculous to put students in the net migration target.
3) Lack of support for vocational and part-time students
There is a lack of meaningful reform to create a genuine earn-while-you-learn route through to high education and beyond.
I represent the constituency with the highest youth unemployment with Britain. What my young constituents tell me is the same thing I heard from apprentices at Rolls Royce. They want a choice of good post-secondary vocational routes to the highest possible skills at university.
But in Britain, (a) we don't have enough apprentices and (b) just 6% of apprentices go on to level 6 skills. That's pitiful. Out of 200 apprenticeship frameworks, just 13 stretch up to level 5. And botched student finance reform means the number of part-time higher education students – many earning while they're learning – are down by nearly 20%.
Why do I feel strongly about this? Why is this bad for higher education? Because it means our universities are not genuinely open to all our talent.
The talented who want a vocational path to higher skills are practically shut out the system. And at postgraduate levels, the situation is just as serious.
The lack of a student finance system means many are denied the chance for further study because they simply cannot get a career development loan. So, the future of advanced level skills for our young people is being arbitrated by a handful of mid-level bank-managers. Is that wise? Of course not.
This poisoning of the roots isn't just bad for higher education. It's bad for Britain.
There's only one way we earn our way out of today's cost of living crisis and that's by expanding knowledge intensive sectors and training people for the new jobs on offer. Yet witness the terrible struggle James Dyson recently described trying – and failing – to hire the engineers he needs to expand his business here in Britain. Somehow this government has contrived to create both sky high youth unemployment and growing regional skills gaps.
What great books like The Second Machine Age now make clear is that unless our skills system starts to catch up with the speed of scientific and industrial change, we'll become a low pay, low skill, low value added nation.
While others streak ahead in the global science race, we will begin to languish. And you don't need a PhD in history to conclude that few nations prosper with a plan like that.
Liam Byrne is shadow higher education minister for Labour – follow him on Twitter @LiamByrneMP. He will be speaking at the Guardian University Forum on 26 February, 2014 – book your place here.
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