This article talks about a meeting on "Higher Education in Recessionary Times" on March 24, 2010, which was hosted by the Society for Higher Education Research Policy Network. Although the meeting did take place in the context of an expected General Election, and on budget day, there was a general sense on the day that whoever won the Election (or as it turned out, did not quite win), there were going to be cuts across the public sector and those cuts would include higher education. The Russell Group of universities had made something of a pre-emptive strike (or pre-emptive resistance) to this policy: arguing that any cuts in higher education would fundamentally damage the standing and the quality of higher education in Britain. Yet, as everyone who works in higher education at present knows only too well, the playing field of higher education is anything but a level one; on the contrary it is marked by peaks and troughs that disrupt much of the "play" of degree level work. It was in this context that Carole Leathwood welcomed the delegates and spoke in her introduction of the considerable material and social part that higher education plays in the British economy. Thinking about cuts in the very process by which citizens become holders and makers of knowledge rather than passive recipients of it, is not in itself a welcome prospect. Yet, part of the essential self-reflection of the day was to examine some of the ways in which cuts in higher education might be imposed and the impact that they would make. In all, the day provided considerable material for further thought and debate and was generally agreed to have been extremely useful in bringing together a wide range of those working in higher education.