The government announced overnight that it is not going to bail out the university sector as a result of the coronavirus. As the Guardian notes:
Universities' hopes of a long-term government bailout in England have been dashed, though £2.6bn in tuition fees will be paid early and ministers pledged to allow full fees to be charged even if students were unable to return to lecture theatres.
Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, said institutions could continue to charge the full £9,250 annual tuition fee for undergraduates while campuses remained closed and face-to-face classes were suspended as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, as long high standards of online teaching were maintained.
The FT notes:
In a package announced by ministers on Monday to shore up the sector's short-term cash flow, universities have agreed not to engage in predatory student admissions practices in return for an advance of tuition fees worth up to £2.6bn.
However, the sector failed to secure government backing for its demand for a £2bn research funding bailout to protect universities most exposed to a predicted sharp fall in international students this autumn. Instead they were offered an advance of just £100m in research funding.
They added:
Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter university said the package had not addressed the reality that the group was facing a projected £1.7bn shortfall as a result of the expected drop-off in overseas students.
Numerous thoughts follow.
First, this will lead to mass redundancies at universities, and most especially amongst academic staff, many of whom are on temporary contracts.
Second, this will scar the reputation of UK universities for a long time to come.
Third, the failure of the government to support research when Brexit is also causing untold damage to the sector as a result of the loss of European cooperation cannot be overstated: we will now be in the research wilderness.
Fourth, the well being of many students is now at risk: they cannot be sure that the institutions they are investing in will survive long enough to give them their degrees. That is grossly unfair to vast numbers of young people and could blight the lives of many.
And, fifth, the claim that all students must pay their fees is similarly grossly unreasonable. As many parents will know (and I do) some students are being abandoned by their universities this term and have literally no work of any sort whatsoever to do for the entire term and yet are being told they must pay more than £3,000 by addition to their student debt for this privilege. That is grossly unreasonable. Why should they shoulder the debt for this?
The lack of awareness on the part of the government of the crisis that they are creating on a multitude of fronts by this behaviour is staggering.
We need strong universities.
We need well trained young people.
We need to commit to the inter-generational creation of excellence.
This is not an issue the young can be left to carry alone.
And nor is there the slightest element of logic to the idea that universities are dispensible business units.
That this might lead to a serious reform of universities, their funding and student funding is the best hope. In the meantime gross injustice will be done.
And whilst this is going on, Easyjet has a bailout.
Just think about that.
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This is the academic world’s more than equivalent of “F*ck business”!
The economics of this are every bit as awful as you point out – and on every head that you identify. The economic damage done will, like the Johnson Tories’ lethal disregard for the population’s health, grow exponentially as the negative multiplier effects are felt. To take the research sector alone – they create starved research, bringing staff losses, bringing individual loss of economic activity plus loss of economic spin-offs from research, also bringing diminished academic/research standing and reputational damage bringing increasing marginalisation from international research projects, bringing loss of significant non-‘U’K research funding streams,bringing attenuation of updating of teaching, bringing more reputational damage, bringing… – and so on to a genuinely terminal decline in the whole HE sector for if this is the fate of our once proud universities what future can there be for any of the others in the sector.
All this is crazy enough – but what is worse, though the smallest of surprises, is the clearest of indicators that the ‘U’ K is no longer a polity which even understands what education, let alone any university, is about in terms of the development of human lives and the enrichment of humanity as a whole. The world I committed to all my life has simply been abandoned and trashed. Truly – the barbarians are in charge.
Indeed…
I was at prep-school with a boy called Edward back in the early 1970s, then my folks emigrated to South Africa. He was from a wealthy family in Cheshire. I did not see him again until he asked to visit us in Cape Town during his gap year before he went to Cambridge, which was about 1980. I was already second year Economics and Geography at UCT by then. Anyway we fell out within days as he had turned into a rabid Thatcherite. Badly enough that by the time he went home I was quoting Marx and Engels at him as that generated a furious response. I remember clearly one of his comments was that the ‘problem with England was allowing the workers to have an education. That just gave them ideas above their station’. So South Africa was great because there was ‘Bantu Education’ that only taught what was needed to operate a machine and nothing likely to cause anyone to question society, or other subversive thoughts. So the real solution to the UK economy was to get the workers chained to their machines with the overseers going round with whips. I am not making this up, either. I saw Edward once again by chance in Cambridge when he was about to graduate. However I have intermittently followed his career. So he did all the right things to advance in the Tory Party, such as marrying a cabinet minister’s daughter. I think he stood three times for Parliament in Cheshire, but fortunately did not get elected.
What is the point of this story? Well he was young and unguarded and thought I was ‘one of us’, but I think these were genuine private views and probably at that age reflected the parents. I think they would be quite widely held among that sort of Tory too and I have no reason to think they would have changed over the years. Oxford and Cambridge have enough private income they don’t need to charge fees, so they will survive and cater for the future Edwards. The red brick Unis and former Polys – well they would not care if they went bust. All ‘full of pinko lefties’ anyway.
I hope and trust that Scotland does not pursue such vandalism. I suspect we won’t but then education was always seen differently in Scotland. We did after all have twice as many universities as England back in 1800 (4 compared to 2), and every parish had a school.
Maybe, though, it would be a good opportunity to stop the telephone number salaries for Vice Chancellors and admin people, plus end the idea that these are commercial businesses.
Even the ancient Scottish universities have had large numbers of foreign students now (and for some time), presumably paying high fees to fund the major investment, development and expansion programmes which, at least in some cases are very extensive. These developments are producing major science, technology, engineering research centres. Glasgow University is in the fortunate position to have owned the big 14 acre site on which the old Western Infirmary was built, as a Victorian teaching hospital right beside the main University campus of Gilmorehill. The Western has now been demolished; with the opening of the major hospital on the south bank of the Clyde, and the University has taken back its site; allowing a huge £1 Billion expansion plan to be undertaken, almost uniquely in an ancient British university, around its core campus hub. It is an extraordinary sight, for someone like me who knows Gilmorehill well.
But will the cost kill the university?
I have no idea what the current implications of the COVID-19 crisis are for the development, or for the Scottish Universities generally. The Scottish Government is likely to be a great deal more sympatheric to the Universities than Westminster appears to be; but as you well know, in finance the Scottish Government has limited powers of independent action. As someone who still uses the university library I can say there were large numbers of foreign students, both undergraduate and postgraduate in Glasgow; notably from China (PRC).
As for the University? It has been around since 1451; it has survived some crises; including the Reformation; Charles I; Cromwell; and the Glorious Revolution. My hunch is it will still be here when Boris Johnson’s Government is largely forgotten history.
I hope so…
But 14 acres…now?
I know the site
It’s ambitious
You missed out the fact the scots charge english students full tuition fees while the EU students do not get charged. That is not fair and very discriminatory. After all we all in the same nation and stuff like that is pure nationalistic nonsense and creates a lot of anger and resentment.
They started maybe 18 months ago; you would be astonished at the progress. There is also a massive science hub nearing completion on the north side of University Avenue. This project is well under way. Google it! It must be one of the biggest redevelopments of a University campus in the UK, in recent years.
Mr Sharrocks,
Scotland has a separate status in the Union; it always has been different. The difference is still guaranteed, and accepted in the 1707 Treaty. We have a separate legal system. We have a separate education system. We always have. It seems, therefore that you just do not know much about Scotland; and since we all live in the UK, you really would benefit from knowing more. What can I say? We have devolution. So we are moving further apart.
Your ship has already sailed. You missed it, and it isn’t coming back for you. It wouldn’t come back if you were less abrasive, but it would eliminate pointless anger and needless resentment.
Let me be the first in the rush to say it… this government in particular and the Tories in general simply couldn’t survive in the face of any educated electorate.
Richard, first, a short snippet on the current universities minister, Michelle Donelan, from the WonkHE blog, shortly after Donelan’s rise to ministerial status, having only become an MP in 2015:
‘Donelan has spoken in the House of Commons in HE on a handful of occasions — arguing in favour of uncapped recruitment, against unconditional offers (in a Westminster Hall debate), against high senior staff pay, and in favour of promoting apprenticeships over degree courses noting her “determination to challenge the outdated perception that university is the only desirable option for the ambitious and motivated.”
In essence it is difficult to see Michelle Donelan as anything other than the fast-tracked career politician she likes to rail against. Clearly popular within the Conservative party, her maternity cover role as Minister for Children looks to have been her path to a DfE role of her own. As befits someone with a background in public affairs, she is very likely to be “on message” — interventions in HE debates can be read as coming from number 10 rather than her own analysis.’ (The whole blog – which is worth a read – is here: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/who-is-michelle-donelan/ )
Note the point about promoting apprenticeships over degree courses and the quotation at the end of the first paragraph. In short, not only do we have a universities minister that knows almost nothing about HE but what views she does have appear to be biased in a particular direction. That said, this is not the first time the ministerial role for HE has been occupied by someone with limited knowledge of their brief. And, lets also remind ourselves, that the (disasterous) funding system we have now is based on a review by someone who also had little or no understanding of English/UK HE, his claim to fame being that he’d been Chief Executive of BP – Lord Browne of Madingley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browne_Review).
So, to return to your blog. You’re absolutely spot on. Indeed, given I’ve not long retired from HE and my wife and many of my friends continue to work in the university sector at various universities around the East Midlands, the topic of how universities have been required to operate over the past six weeks has been and remains a very live topic. One point that is not much commented on, however, is that the impact of the forced and rapid move to online and distance teaching is far more profound for students studying certain types of undergraduate or Masters degrees than it is for others. For example, in an applied arts subject (fashion, knitwear, fine art, furniture/product design, architecture, etc) students are now unable to produce an artefact or range of artefacts that for many of them represents the finale to three years or more of study and hard work – not to mention financial cost.
However, even for the students and teachers of “desk based” based subjects (politics, economics, business studies, etc, etc), I speak from experience when I say that producing online courses is not as simple and straightforward as many of my colleagues (and particularly management) at campus based, face-to- face, universities might have assumed prior to the arrival of Covid-19. The rapid arrival of the virus meant that in many cases there was little time to think through how to shift courses designed to be primarly delivered face-to-face to online delivery. The result has been that in many cases lecturing staff have often had to work flat out to repurpose material and design and deliver online tutorials using unfamiliar technology (e.g. Microsoft Teams) with little or no training or support. And I have no doubt that the resulting student experience (which these days is supposed to be what HE is all about given this is a dubiously defined metric obsessed about by government) differs considerbaly from uni to uni and degree to degree.
Meanwhile, as well as the fundamental change to the nature of teaching that Covid-19 has delivered students have also lost the social side of their time at university. This, again, is something that appears to get little attention when discussing the nature of HE in a Covid -19 world, but to many current or potential students it will almost certainly feature prominently as they think about how they progress their studies or, indeed, whether they consider it worthwhile to start uni at all this year. As the Open University has always recognised, distance/online learning is not for everyone. And while the world in which we currently live may mean that online education becomes a far more attractive option than it was in pre Covid times I suspect many young people will be very reluctant to give up the opportunity to attend a campus based university and forego all that goes with that experience.
Consequently, the situation that the university sector faces in England and elsewhere across the UK, is not simply about the loss of significant numbers of overseas students for the 2020-21 academic year and beyond. Indeed, like many who teach in the HE sector I have long believed that the sector had become far too focused on overseas students because they were largely seen as “cash cows”. Additionally, and as importantly, there will, I’m sure, be a large number of current or potential home students who either want to pause or defer their studies. Any young person in that situation is absolutely correct in taking that view. And for the reasons I noted above, this will particularly be the case in subjects where online teaching cannot deliver elements of a course that students (and teachers) have traditionally seen as central to and/or the culmination of a degree.
In your blog you mention a range of outcomes from the government’s approach. I suspect many are deliberate, although the unintended consequences are perhaps likely to be more far reaching than the obvious consequences. The loss of academic staff goes without saying. The “letting go” of staff on fixed-term contracts has already been widely reported an I’ve no doubt that will expand to redundancies within the next month or two. Meanwhile, the management of many universities will make the forced, rapid, and inevitably in some/many cases, less than fully thought through move to online teaching a permanent feature of campus based teaching once it returnd (i.e. in 2021). Whether that delivers the “student experience” that most young people assume will be part of their time at university I doubt. But then again, the management of universities have for years exploited the fact that an incoming cohort of students has in most cases very little to do with a previous cohort (apart from when they are being shown around on an open day), and so the “student experience” can be altered from one year to another without students being aware of it.
Sadly, I think that your ‘best hope’ that ‘…this might lead to a serious reform of universities, their funding and student funding…’ will not become a reality. ‘Gross injustice will be done’, and in terms of “student experience” will continue as it has since the Browne Review was accepted as the basis for funding HE and student finance back in 2010.
What online teaching cannot do is let the teacher spot the student who is not keeping up and then have the quiet word to offer help and support
It is deeply discriminatory for all sorts of reasons but that one really worries me
It takes some experience to see them, and it can be transformational to get them to come for some help
That’s one example of what I was talking about when I said producing online courses as not as simple as some might think, Richard. At the OU, based on years of experience in distance teaching, that was the kind of issue that had to be explicitly addressed in the module design process for a module to get approval. Add to that the skills and experience of most OU tutors and generally students who found themselves in such a position didn’t get missed. But even at the OU the presure of the last decade took its toll. Tutor/student ratios increased – against the wishes of all teaching staff – and summer schools – invaluable at giving students an opportunity to do hands on work (e.g. in engineering, lab work, and so on) and benefit from some face to face time, plus the social side, of course, all but wiped out. Those changes were entirely the result of the way in which HE has been funded in the UK since Browne, which effectively undermined the OU’s long-standing funding model and approach (deliberate on the part of government, I’m sure).
Current students are between a rock and a hard place. Continue their studies via on-lone course with all th disadvantages that has been outlined above, or pause for year – and do what? Chances of a job in the UK- minimal, chances to travel the world- minimal.
I am appalled by this Government’s attitude. having forced them to become businesses- which i deeply regret- now they are refusing to bail them out whilst bailing out airlines etc. it beggars belief.
My sons have decided carrying on is the best bad bet
I note that you have made reference to Sir Steve Smith’s views and his worries concerning the financial restrictions looming ahead.
Under his guidance, Exeter University has certainly prospered and at his annual garden parties he has regularly updated us with its successes, not only in academic terms but also in reference to the financial input into the South West peninsula as a whole.
The effect in the South West will be far-reaching and no doubt Steve will be pleased to be retiring shortly.
I offer myself as a private science tutor and had a Brit student in a European university ask for tutorials online. I agreed and asked when. He replied during his online exam. He wanted me to be on hand so he could get me to answer questions he didn’t know or check his answers with me.
I stalled while checking with my wife who works in student admissions etc and has to deal with issues of plagiarism and cheating. Who confirmed it would be cheating.
So I declined and offered conventional tutorials in advance to get him ready for the exam. Nothing. Until this morning the day before when he taunts me with the money*.
So I reported him to the Tutoring site who did well and banned him. I was particularly upset that he was only interested in passing by cheating and not in actually knowing his stuff an ability I could help him with. Been there, done that many times before. Nobody I have ever tutored in that subject (my major) has failed the course.
The point is it shows the danger of moving stuff like this online. It opens up cheating opportunities.
Whoops, forgot my *
*Except I don’t make much doing it. Headline figure I charge on the site £25 an hour. The site takes its cut leaving me with £18.75. I’m on UC so subject to a 63% marginal tax reduction on my benefit. Which leaves me with £6.90 for my work as a PhD qualified tutor. Less than minimum wage.
At the moment that’s as good as it gets as online tutorials mean I don’t have to pay for travel. Sure I get to claim the travel off the £18.75 before the reduction but I can do it for £5.40 ish or less.
It gets worse. I then need to make sure I carry over the £11ish in my account or I will be short of money next month so tutoring actually complicates matters. The Treasury’s intervention in UC raising the level from 40% to not just 60% but a miserly 63%. There is NO incentive to do part time work under UC. However it is a great incentive to work under the counter and I cannot blame anyone who does that.
So taunting me with the money thinking it was £25 was funny. Also quite obviously I don’t do it for the money.
Since exams were cancelled in the schools the bottom has dropped out of tutoring. I did have one online tutorial recently. A final year university student with a project and an uncontactable supervisor. It was great fun as it turned out.
I have nothing constructive to add about the crisis facing UK universities. It just all sounds totally absurd to me. The entire English education system needs root & branch reform. For starters there should be a student debt jubilee. And then, as in Finland, all education right through to PhD level should be government funded. Students are only required to pay for books, transportation, and other school supplies – and student financial aid is readily available. Lunch is free!
In Finland, where education is seen ‘not as a privilege but as a constitutional right’, schools up to university level are almost exclusively funded and administered by local government. Private education still exists but only under direct government regulation, hence it’s a very small and insignificant element in the mix. Re graduate education, since 2017, students from outside the EEA have to pay tuition fees, while students from the EEA continue to study for free. (As an indication of how seriously the Fins take education both primary and secondary teachers must have a master’s degree.) The result is Finland has one of the most respected and successful education systems in the world, putting ours to shame. There is no acceptable or logical excuse.
‘Why Finland’s Higher Education System Is the Best in the World’ – https://theculturetrip.com/europe/finland/articles/why-finlands-higher-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world/
‘How Finland’s education system works’ – https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/how-finlands-education-system-works
‘Why Finland and Norway still shun university tuition fees’ – https://theconversation.com/why-finland-and-norway-still-shun-university-tuition-fees-even-for-international-students-36922.
‘Education in Finland’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland
I know Denmark well
They get six years free post school education…
And you wonder why they do so well
The behaviour of the people in power seems so blatantly mendacious. How can anyone believe it’s not their conscious intention to ruin society?
I think that attitude shown to the Universities is indicative of this Government. It is as simple as that. They do not really want to help. They only know how to break things. It is unacceptable given how much we gave to the City in 2008.
Speaking with colleagues at work, their children at Uni are becoming demotivated.
I think the issue is related to the attributes of a lack of pedagogy – the real social interactions that come between lecturers, teachers and their students which can reinforce and motivate learning. It is so typical that pedagogy is not considered – that learning as a social experience is under valued.
For God’s sake – even those supping at the cup of Right wing politics benefit from pedagogy!!!!
Obviously this tranche of Tories has given up on social mobility if all the minister wants to do is shove people into apprenticeships. We need a mixture of university and apprenticeships going forward.
If you believe in social and class eugenics like the Tories do, then the plight of the Universities under the lockdown is an opportunity to cement them and theirs in, and us and ours OUT.
Sceptics might like to know that the sainted Steve Smith of Exeter is in fact one of those administrators with a telephone number salary – in fact, one of the first.
He closed fundamental departments at Exeter (famously Chemistry) and positioned the University adroitly to produce the sort of interdisciplinary (i.e. undemanding in two subjects) undergraduate and graduate courses beloved by the FIRE economy and overseas students.
He has presided over an expansion of the University that first blighted residential areas with a rash of private landlord HMO’s and has now become financialised and corporatised, with the construction of a fleet of purpose-built an expensively financed student accommodation blocks on the historic campus (on what was open farmland in the centre of Exeter) and the despoliation of the very centre of the city with massive (and I mean massive, 8 storeys tall and a city block in area) student rabbit hutches, like something from Hong Kong.
Exeter University is massively leveraged on domestic and overseas students, paying both tuition and, increasingly, accommodation fees, and has not cared a job about the negative externalities of its expansion (and the City Council has been complicit in its boosterism).
The final straw is that the University is purporting to close its campus to the public during coronavirus, despite it being a huge urban green space and a key nexus of walking routes between the northern suburbs, when every brick on that campus has been paid for and maintained with public money.
Steve Smith and Exeter University? A plague on all their student houses!
Unlike some sectors, the education facilities will be funded one way or another so the great reset may be a thing of beauty, if the higher education types can recover their purpose of education and research rather than running degree mills at a profit.