On 13 July 2010, the Provost of University College London (currently ranked the UK's second-best university, and the world's fourth best) suggested that undergraduate student places should be cut, and research money protected.
This comes before Business Secretary Vince Cable's speech on how to cut public funding for HE on 15 July 2010 and after Higher Education Minister David Willet's remarks on the likelihood of an increase in tuition fees in June 2010. It also needs to be seen in the context of the coalition government's plans to cut the UK's deficit and find savings of up to 40% in government departments, to be announced in the autumn.
The Higher Education Problem
The "problem" is a complex one. University applications have been rising and rising quickly. 2010 saw the fourth consecutive record high for undergraduate applications. Government policy has been, until very recently, to find places for most of those applicants, in order to meet a target of 50% of 18-year-olds to go to university.
At the same time, there has been controversy for many years now over how to pay for this expansion. Before 1997, UK undergraduate university students paid no tuition fees at all. In 1979 they all received a full grant to cover their cost of living and could even claim unemployment benefit and housing benefit during the long holiday periods so they did not need to get part-time jobs.
Through the 1980s and 1990s this changed with grants increasingly subject to a means test, and benefits removed. Under Conservative education secretary Ken Clarke, even the means-tested grants were gradually replaced with student loans and this process was completed by Tony Blair's New Labour government, which also introduced a tuition fee of £1000 a year for all students. Concerns about student debts did not prevent a later reform that allowed universities to charge "top-up fees" of up to £3000 a year.
At the same time, universities were encouraged to make greater efforts to recruit students from non-traditional backgrounds and offer bursaries. However, student debt has ballooned with the average student debt now being perhaps as much as £23,500 according to the NUS. Because the loan repayments are income contingent (students do not begin repayments until they are earning £15,000 a year) some ministers have preferred to describe the current system as something akin to an extra income tax on graduates, including current universities minister David Willetts.
If the ceiling on top-up fees is lifted in autumn 2010, average student debt is likely to soar for future graduates.
The Solutions to the HE Problem
Alongside the hints at putting up fees, the current government appears to have hinted at cutting research funding. This will be unpopular with the elite universities and Russell Group vice chancellors. The Guardian (14 July 2010) report that UCL, for example, receive annual government funding of £69 million pounds for tuition and £104 million for research. Some of the newer universities devote much more of their budget's to tuition with relatively little research.
The government is likely to point out that universities are also able to make substantial private income from research, and that making researchers justify their activities to a market as well as just to their academic peers would make research more relevant and cost effective. Academics are likely to respond that some of the greatest research conducted in recent decades has been possible because of public funding and would not have been able to find a private sponsor.
Of course, universities are also able to make a good deal of private income from their undergraduate students because it is their presence that brings shops, bars, banks, etc. to university campuses.
UCL Provost, Malcolm Grant, has made it clear that he would prefer to see undergraduate places cut at what he calls "pile it high, sell it cheap" universities, even if such cuts would force some of those universities to close. Of course, without such cuts in places, the lifting of the fees lid would give such universities are market advantage in "selling" degrees to debt-averse students frightened off by £30,000 or more debts.
Others argue that university funding should be protected as a form of investment in the economy and that both cuts in university places and hikes in university fees, at a time when public sector jobs are being cut and some experts warn of the threat of a "double-dip recession" would be counter-productive.
A lot of people, not least the parents of potential university students of the future, will be listening to Mr. Cable's comments very carefully indeed.
Duncan Hall - Duncan Hall is a semi-professional acoustic musician and lecturer in Government & Politics
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