Tag Archives: UK

The Sunday Times today reports that the review panel on university funding chaired by Lord Browne is likely to recommend that “universities would be allowed to increase fees well above the inflation rate each year – possibly by as much as £1,000 – as they move towards a free market”. The report also suggests that “Leading research universities could charge students an estimated £7,000 a year while fees for science undergraduates could rise to £14,000”.

Those who value scholarship, scientific excellence, and equality of opportunity in higher education must now take all forms of peaceful political action to oppose this proposal that would be catastrophic for universities in the UK.

It is scarcely surprising that the review panel is recommending such a free market approach to universities:

• Responsibility for higher education currently rests with a government department called “The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills”, presided over by Lord Mandelson.  The priorities of this Department are on the role of universities in supporting UK PLC and on developing business solutions, rather than on the value of universities in their own right.
• The review is led by Lord Browne, former Chief Executive of BP.  Why, oh why, was someone who took his company to near disaster (look at the current crises facing BP), and who was one of the most highly paid executives in the UK, asked to lead such an important review?  Surely there were scholars or scientists who understood the true value of universities, who could have done this better?
• Most UK university Vice Chancellors are so concerned with maintaining funding for their institutions that they have forgotten their most important role which is to provide scholarly vision and leadership.  They have become co-conspirators in this move to a free market in higher education, where only the richest (or most corrupt) will be able to survive.

These factors combine to provide a recipe for disaster – all that the key actors in policy making can see is the need to generate more income to fund existing levels of student education at universities, and the only solution they can come up with is to raise fees, based on the ludicrous logic that higher education is a private good for which individuals should be willing to pay.  I have previously commented at length on the flawed logic of this, and so will not repeat myself here.

However, three arguments seem to me to be unassailable:

• Universities are facing a funding crisis because of the mistaken belief that we need to have 50% of our young people gaining a university education.  There is no proof that providing a university education (which is in any case becoming increasingly second-rate) for this number of people is good, either for them or for society at large. The easiest way to reduce costs is simply to reduce the number of places on offer at universities.
• Many students (although by no means all) waste their time at university.  It is a lifestyle choice which is preferable to being unemployed.  One of the reasons there are currently so many applications for university places is quite simply that it is tough to find a job during the economic downturn.  Instead, let’s make gaining a university place more competitive, so that only those who are really committed to scholarship and scientific excellence gain a place.
• Rather than imposing sweeping cuts across all universities, it would make much more sense to close those that do not provide learning or research opportunities of a high enough standard.  Why are we so unwilling to close entire universities?  Businesses go bust and people are made unemployed.  The same should happen to the least successful universities.

The Browne review is focusing on the wrong questions.  It is trying to find ways to fund an over-bloated, self congratulatory, but in reality increasingly mediocre higher education sector.  Instead, let’s take a knife to the sector, and cut out the rot before it infects us all.  Let’s have a more streamlined, outstanding and successful university sector, where there is real competition amongst students to gain places that will give them a truly excellent education, rather than a dumbed-down, penny pinching, higher education environment where all that matters is getting large numbers of students through the door to make financial ends meet.

For those who believe that it is inevitable that students should pay fees to attend university, it is worth remembering that there are some enlightened countries, such as Finland, where people value universities so much that attendance remains free – even for students from overseas!

The Higher Education Council for England (HEFCE) announced today its provisional funding distribution to universities and colleges in England for 2010-11.  The main decisions by the HEFCE Board were as follows:

• “£4,727 million recurrent funding for teaching. This represents an increase of 0.4 per cent in cash terms or a decrease of 1.6 per cent in real terms, compared with 2009-10.
• £1,603 million recurrent funding for research. This represents a £32 million or 2 per cent increase in cash terms (maintained in real terms) on the £1,571 million allocated for the 2009-10 academic year.
• £562 million in capital funding, which represents a 14.9 per cent reduction in cash terms on the 2009-10 allocation.
• £294 million in special funding for national programmes and initiatives. This represents a 7 per cent reduction in cash terms on 2009-10.
• £150 million for the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which compares with £134 million in 2009-10. This represents an 11.9 per cent increase”.

Responses from the university sector were not surprisingly highly critical.  As the BBC reported,  this represented a cut of £449 million, with teaching budgets being reduced by £215 million, a cut in real terms of 1.6% on 2009-10 levels, research being frozen, and the buildings budget being cut by 15%.  It is estimated that these cuts will lead to a reduction in student places in England of about 6,000 compared with 2009-10 levels.

Such cuts add fuel to the universities’ demands to be allowed to charge students higher fees.  But in an election year, the student vote may delay such apparently inevitable fee increases.  Again, as the BBC notes, “Students campaigning against an increase in tuition fees are targeting MPs who hold seats in a “hit list” of university cities in England. The National Union of Students says MPs must support their campaign against higher fees – or lose the student vote. Among the MPs identified as targets by students are three ministers – John Denham, Ben Bradshaw and Hilary Benn – and the chief whip, Nick Brown”.

While these cuts are in large part driven by the need for the government to reduce the deficit brought about by its efforts to overcome the financial crisis of 2008-9, they do highlight some important questions:

• Do we already have too many students going to university?
• What is so special about the notion that it is healthy to have 50% of our young people going to university?
• Are universities providing appropriate learning opportunities for those who study there?

I live in hope that these cuts might be used sensibly to help provide responses to these questions.  Rather than trying to support an increasingly second-rate university system that fails not only its students and academics, but also the wider society of which we are all part, surely the time has come for a cull of universities?  Should we not close those that are least effective, and turn them into institutions that would provide the technical skills and expertise that our country so badly needs?  Let us stop pretending that half of our population somehow has a right to go to university, and instead use the limited amounts of funding available to support a truly outstanding research and learning culture in institutions that can properly call themselves universities.

For some practical suggestions on how we might achieve this, see my comment on “Solving the crises facing UK universities“

Following Ed Balls and Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson gave an enthusiastic and committed speech today at the Learning and Technology World Forum held in London at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.  He argued strongly that the UK Higher Education sector can, and should, play a significant role in helping to expand Britain’s ‘exports’.  Amongst some of the many things he said, were the following:

• Britain has a very strong higher and further education sector
• Over the last decade real term funding for research in Britain has doubled
• There is now a real challenge to develop this resource into one equipped for a digital knowledge economy
• British higher education needs to pioneer new forms of learning – especially ones that fit around work or distance
• We need to develop alternatives to the traditional  3 year university degree programmes for students straight out of school
• We need to build on online and distance based degrees to support people wishing to gain degrees
• The UK’s higher education sector must diversify and change its models – enabling it to fit into new ways of living to suit the individual ways of students
• ICTs can make the whole process of learning more efficient – he claimed that efficiencies have saved more than £ 1 billion in HE staff time since 2005 – and this represents a huge area for international collaboration
• We have to focus on to the fact that what we can do together in collaboration will enable us to get more out of this
• Britain is a pioneer in online learning
• He concluded by saying that the key is seeing the digital revolution as an agenda where the benefits of international collaboration are not zero sum

Despite the concerns that I have over much of this agenda (see my previous blogs on Mandelson’s vision for higher education) his comments today provided a clear statement of the government’s commitment to using ICTs innovatively to support alternative forms of higher education.

On the 3rd November, Lord Mandelson announced what his Department of Business, Innovation and Skills described as “a new framework for the future success of higher education”.  Perhaps this could lead to a certain kind of success, but it hammers with renewed vigour another nail into the coffin of universities in the UK.

As his Department stated, key measures set out in the framework, along with my responses, are as follows

• More competition between universities, giving greater priority to programmes that meet the need for high level skills – Universities are not, and should not be seen as being, merely about high level skill provision.  Obviously this depends on how we define ‘high level skills’, but alongside those needed to make a prosperous economy (look how dismally our bankers have delivered over the last couple of years), are those skills associated with critical reflection and an ability to challenge taken for granted assumptions about the ‘good’ of our contemporary capitalist society.  Competition is also most definitely not the answer.  Universities work best when there is collaboration and cooperation rather than competition.
• Business to be more engaged in the funding and design of programmes, sponsorship of students, and work placements – yes, it is indeed important that universities work closely with the private sector – after all, they benefit hugely from the investment of the state in delivering the cannon fodder of global capitalism.  However, the suggestion that the private sector should increasingly fund higher education smacks of the government trying to find others to pay for its failed commitment to furnish our society with a fit for purpose university system.
• Creating more part-time, work-based and foundation degrees to make it easier for adults to go to university, with routes from apprenticeships through to Foundation Degrees and other vocational programmes – universities should not fundamentally be about providing foundation degrees – leave these to other types of institution.  The central purpose of a university should be about pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward, through high quality research and the encouragement of able young people to engage in rigorous scientific and scholarly enquiry.
• Encouraging universities to consider contextual data in admissions, as one way of ensuring that higher education is available to all young people who have the ability to benefit – this is social engineering.  Yes, of course universities should seek to provide outstanding learning opportunities to those most able to benefit, but the simple mechanisms recommended are simply not sophisticated enough to enable the identification of those who can contribute most to the UK’s universities.
• Universities setting out clearly what students can expect in terms of the nature and quality of courses offered – yes, and the best already do so!  But please, universities are fundamentally about moving the boundaries of research forward, and encouraging the development of enquiring minds in the most able people rather than passing on existing accepted knowledge.
• Sustaining our world class research base by continuing to focus on excellence, concentrating research funding where needed to secure critical mass and impact – the highest quality research does not necessarily need to be concentrated.  The  most innovative research is often delivered  by individuals working in isolation – indeed, concentrating research activity based on past success criteria, will actually restrict the development of novel and exciting innovation.  Real innovation usually happens ‘at the edges’.
• Encouraging collaboration between universities on world class research, especially in high cost science – the rationale for this is that we cannot afford high cost science.  But we cannot afford not to!  Furthermore, not all world class research is expensive.  Indeed, many Nobel prize winners actually do low cost research!

As I have argued elsewhere, universities are about far more than providing a second rate ‘education’ for students not really interested in learning.  We can afford a high quality university sector by reducing the number of universities and the number of students wasting their time pretending to study at them.

Why is it that the UK wants to treat universities as businesses when so many countries in the world still provide free higher education to their people – look for example at Finland and many of the German Länder? Why is it that the government persists in destroying a university system that was once the pride of the world? Perhaps most surprisingly of all, why are students and academics not rising up in revolutionary protest as did our comrades in the late 1960s?

The time has come to stand up and be counted.  We must resist this Philistine, ignorant and damaging attempt to destroy what is left of our universities.