The FT notes this morning that:
The Treasury is resisting calls for a £2bn bailout of UK universities, insisting that they should not be treated differently from other hard-pressed industries, raising fears of bankruptcies in the higher education sector.
The Treasury's opposition to a sector-specific bailout for universities, which was confirmed by officials from three Whitehall departments, comes despite increasing warnings that some universities face crippling losses because of the Covid-19 crisis.
They add:
Its resistance has caused division in Whitehall as well as objections from senior figures in the university sector. They warn that a bailout is essential to protecting the national research base that will play a key role in the post-Covid recovery phase.
To give this some context:
Universities have asked for a doubling of this year's research funding in order to plug an immediate £790m shortfall this year and the forthcoming hit to their budgets caused by the expected collapse of the international student market, which is worth £6.9bn annually in the UK.
The callousness of those resisting support is breathtaking.
First, universities are not like other businesses. They're not, actually, businesses at all. It's only a neoliberal fetish with the corporate form that has ever suggested that they are, and that they should be revenue maximising, income-generating assets funded by off-balance-sheet loans provided by the government as a sham to pretend that the sector does not have public sector cost when in fact it very obviously does. That sham is what has now failed.
The reality is that universities were for a very long time, and for decades during the post war consensus era, a critical part of the education system which the grant and subsidised tuition system intended should be open to all for the benefit of society at large.
There was limited competition between universities, of course. And there was an undoubted hierarchy, based in no small part on snobbery. There still is. But there was also substantial cooperation. The universities were part of the education system. They were not competing enterprises.
And now we have reached the point where the pretence that they are akin to companies, competing in a market place, is going to blight lives. That is because markets are, of course, premised on the idea that those in them must be able to fail. Only the fittest survive. So be it, the exponents say. That way only the best get access to capital.
But that ignores the cost of failure. In particular it ignores the blighted lives of those who suddenly find the course they were offered, and into which they have invested much, will no longer be there. What sort of justice is that?
And it ignores the blighted towns and cities who lose these institutions and all the spin offs that come from them, including for some the vital chance to study near home, because not every student is 18, or willing and even able to leave their family or home town to study.
But worst, it treats accessible education as expendable. Those making the decision probably know that they and their like will always get access. What do they care? For others that is simply not true.
Treat this issue then as being one where an elite - call them The Treasury if you like, for that is what they have always thought themselves to be - wish to reinforce their status by eliminating universities, and those that go to them and teach there, that they think unworthy of the title. The zombies will be gone, they will claim.
And maybe there are a few universities that are in the margins. Although, let me stress, they are not the ones most people will first think of. There are universities with strong finances that fail students right across the spectrum. But finance is now all that matters.
And students, staff, towns, cities and whole futures are to apparently be abandoned in pursuit of the idea of the education market that never existed. And that is callous.
I stress, I am not saying that all courses at all universities need survive forever. I think sensible, co-ordinated and cooperative consolidation over time might make much sense. But I stress all the conditions I note.
And I am not saying that all the admin burden in universities need survive either, because much of it is the result of the cost of the supposed market structure that the sector is forced to use.
To put it another way, enforced cooperative reform in a system stripped of its faux autonomy and removed from the pretence of competition would be a valuable condition of any university bailout.
But to abandon the sector to its fate? That would just be callous and unforgivable irresponsibility that people would not forget.
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The perils of privatization. Compare the Swiss system (where I have lectured), with regional control, excellent quality/ numbers relationship. I agree with your basic tenet, but should the state throw good money to support a system not fit for purpose?
Why is it not fit for purpose?
Rec all, the state created it….
Just because the state created it, does not make it fit for purpose. You spend hours arguing against some current policies.
I am hearing in the media that the advice is that face masks cannot be widely distributed going forward because we need to ensure that the NHS gets them first.
Don’t you find it weird that the default of this country is always that sectors of society have to do without so that other sectors can have what they need when there are national crises?
Someone gets: but someone else has to do without for that to happen.
There is no will to completely solve a problem – just to manage it in the most iniquitous way possible – we are expected to be British by accepting the limitations our rulers impose on us – artificially in this case, to bear up and take it.
Yet in 2008, we printed what we needed to solve the problem. Because of course, it was finance.
Will the Universities then be the sacrificial lamb because of these imposed limitations – imposed by people who only see the power and benefit of money in private terms and national ones?
The Government said they will ‘do whatever it takes’ to get us through then tell us that they cannot help everyone.
So therefore the Government cannot and is not doing ‘whatever it takes’ to get us through it – far from it.
What we need is testing and masks to get things back slowly. We just seem to be waiting for a vaccine – and a big pay day for those involved in it who increasingly have us over a barrel – including it seems the Chief MOs advising the Government.
I am frankly disgusted by the whole thing. This morning instead I had to hear on R4 Shakespeare’s ‘This England’ soliloquy from Richard II :
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
Never have such noble words (with the exception of Jewry mentioned in the full version and noble because I love Shakespeare) been wasted on a Government and a people who have been taught to hate and fight over the scraps its ruler decide they should have – from face masks to housing. I would love to live in a country that was truly as described as this. But it isn’t, and hasn’t been for a long time – if ever.
We can never be this country in the soliloquy – even able to fight infection – until we stop being obsessed with underinvesting in the common weal. This public squalor and private opulence way of living has got to end.
Damn our rulers; damn them all to hell.
Here is a better poem from America (of all places!):
Oh England!
Sick in head and sick in heart
Sick in whole and every part
And yet sicker thou art still
For thinking thou art not ill.
Thanks
You’re welcome.
Why is it that the English’s first response is always about what we CAN’T do.
It is the psychology of defeat, every time. It is a form of social control and it stifles imagination and hope.
Where did it come from? The loss of empire? If we had the instinct to expand abroad, then why can we just not expand the domestic – within our land – when it is needed?
I just don’t understand it other than it is a way of keeping people down.
Until Universities start being managed for their educational and research aims, rather than as a sinecure for many self-serving dead-beats, I have little sympathy.
The Vice-Chancellors £300,000+ salaries might be justified if they did their job and got rid of the useless and disruptive, that play politics well, and supported their stars who are busy doing their job, rather than playing evil games.
So you don’t care about the students?
That’s a Tory attitude….
Now the “magic money tree” debate has finally shown that the goverment can finance whatever it likes with direct funding, £2 billion for universities is mere peanuts compared with the £100s of billions the Treasury is prepared to throw at companies to pay their staff for being idle during this crisis. On the more parochial political Tory motivation point, they don’t like university towns not voting Tory for example Canterbury. All the universities except Russell group ones are expendable in Cummings/Conservative Central Office eyes.
I suspect you are right
Russel Group ones are at risk
The students were in the first, in the first line of my comment. I care greatly, and it was their interests that got cut first by University management.
This event is changing everything, we must ensure Universities are not insulated from it.
Many courses would be better done using recorded lectures and distance learning. The materials are already on-line. It is just the university management pandering to internal vested interests that stop them being the norm.
It is also scandal that the whole school curriculum isn’t available as an interactive on-line service. Apparently stopped by various vested interests.
Those vested interests are usually people wanting to be paid
Once a lecturer has recorded a lecture they have given away their intellectual property in perpetuity
Why should they do that?
I’m pretty sure any IP would belong to the university as their employer.
Not is they can’t claim it
Peter,
I don’t know your background/experience but I teach at university – and simultaneously have been a student for the last 7 years, expanding and enhancing my own knowledge and qualifications – I see both sides of the fence. Number of points. First, an online learning experience is a very different beast from the classroom. I think you’ve overlooked the aspect of human relations, social interactions, which form a big part of successful learning. Though the current situation is more extreme, online learning atomises the environment and we are already seeing student mental health starting to decline. University is about much more than just the opportunity to learn – lifelong friendships are made, social connections matured and developed, extracurricular interests pursued.
Second, there is frankly a lot of nonsense talked about ‘rubbish’ courses. I’ve now studied at 4 different universities – 2 ‘newer’ universities and 2 Russell Group universities. Now, as a lecturer, I took great care in the selection of the courses I wanted to study on, so perhaps I just chose well; but I’ve also taught at 4 different institutions – so I’ve seen a fair range. Some observations from this experience – none of these courses could be described as ‘rubbish’, in fact all were hard work and standards were high. I originally went to university (Russell Group) some time ago – when about 6% of population went. I can, with certainty, attest that teaching is much higher quality these days. Resources are better and more easily available, support is extensive and support services very well trained – people complain about high pass rates but the simple fact is that students are, without doubt, better taught and better supported these days. I would also say students work harder nowadays. So, while there are still areas to be improved (space here does not allow an examination of these) it is also fair to say that there have been significant improvements and it would be good to see this properly acknowledged by this government rather than a patently false narrative that degrees are now easy and staff lazy and complacent. I worked in the private sector for nearly 30 years before teaching – and staff in universities easily compete with the best of the private sector (I’ve also seen the worst of the private sector and they don’t compete with universities – including some very big names who are hand in glove with this government). Rather more mystifying are those government ministers who seem to have sailed through Oxbridge without acquiring any critical thinking skills – this is not a criticism of Oxbridge – but does highlight that excellent work goes on in universities across the country, not just in established universities.
Finally, from a lecturing point of view, online recordings present another danger – that they are not updated (especially as this would keep costs down) – knowledge is mutable, dynamic and polyvalent. Lecturing needs to be mutable, dynamic and polyvalent too – and the live environment offers this. Lecturers change their lectures – they are not static objects and nor should they be. As Chomsky highlighted, if you are teaching the same as 5 years ago then either the field is dead or you are. Even delivered live online does not replace the classroom. Online learning has a place, but it is not the answer. A financially stable environment, without casualised academics and where salaries were realistic (despite what people may think, teaching is far from being adequately, never mind well, paid) would all be positive moves forward – for staff and students. Sadly, what this government proposes will see a much impoverished sector.
Spot on….
I agree, wholeheartedly
I also agree re teaching, harder working students and better support
But the world outside thinks they just drink
Yes, they do that too. And have sex and all that stuff. But many of them also really knock in the hours as well
Precisely! Want to be paid for something that has been made redundant by technology!
Tell me, what proportion of university lecturers are currently giving their course using Zoom or similar?
No they’re not redundant!
How long do you think universities will survive without lecturers?
Do you even know what they do?
All are doing Zoom now – I am this afternoon
But record that and then you can sack the best
Why would you want to do that?
I agree totally, Richard.
As they say: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”.
Education is degraded in a way that I haven’t seen since Thatcher got rid of full grants and the ability for students to work or sign on during holidays.
It is return of another dumbing down, uncritical, unpoliticised knowledgeable young generations – which is fed on cretinous propaganda.
The link to the epidemic by Pedro earlier,has great data and graphs including individual countries. (Comments shut on that hence i post it here)
https://worldcoronavirus.org/
Professor it is the only place I have seen the stats and graphs for Germany – any chance you can post the individual country graph for totals for the them , so it can show the variation based on response between countries. Germany is stunning.
Sorry – not seen…
In my experience, as a parent of a child who has been doing online schooling for almost three months now in Hong Kong, distance learning and pre-recorded lessons on their own are wholly inadequate. The ability for teacher and student to go back and forth over something in person is invaluable. I realise it’s school and not university, where you would expect more maturity and self-reliance, but I think the point still holds.
In my experience as a university teacher (and I have just finished doing some) the loose of that too and fro with a class is going to be crippling
I have always taught very interactively and I just can’t get that through a video in anything like the same way
Nor can you see the body language of the person who is struggling but won’t say it and which if you’re wise you can intervene with – often by inviting them to a session in your office
Isn’t the obvious solution nationalisation.
Just as there should be no taxation without representation there should be no free bailouts, provided by the state to universities.
The only benefit of privatisation was to inject capital to pay for facilities, and to incentivise income generation. The first wasn’t necessary and the price of the latter has been too high.
We should be concerned about overtight state control but so should we be of unbridled private universities.
.
As they have not technically been sold nationalisation is easy…..
In my world most lectures are delivered as webinars – in our business, we choose to pay extra and travel to go to seminars. We find that dedicated time, properly set aside, listening to and questioning a competent lecturer, invaluable.
It is also the case that we use the telephone a lot when answering email questions etc. Time and again we find the question isn’t the question.
On universities – we are where we are and if we want to save something worthwhile, then money has to be found to support them. Then, yes, let us look much more closely at what uni’s are doing and how they are operating with a view to – 1. improving the quality of teaching/learning and 2. ditching anything that doesn’t promote #1