Degree Study – Will Any Of The Government Proposals Work?
Posted on 1:19pm, 14th June 2010 • 12 Comments
“We can’t carry on like this any longer”! chorus all the stakeholders concerned with the organisation of degree study in the UK. And that’s where the agreement and the analysis end and the special interest pleadings take over. Which isn’t helpful because there’s not much time to prevent the catastrophe on its way for degree study, UK research and management / professional training.
Let’s look at what government says about degree study and what will happen if they’re able to put their proposals into practice.
The Universities Minister says student fees for degree study shouldn’t rise (much) because the Treasury can’t afford to fund the costs of a hike in student loans. Mr Willetts also says – correctly – students are on the brink of revolt over rising student debts.
His solution? Reduce the costs of degree study by using FE colleges (cheaper than universities) to teach external degrees, the study centres being so close to most students’ homes they won’t need to live independently (allowing the government to cut back on funding that element of the student loan).
This Universities Minister is the first government representative to accept the debt burden of degree study is getting too high (even though he’s more worried about the state’s finances than those of the students!). He’s also right in saying there are cheaper routes to degree study than the one currently favoured by most students.
What the Universities Minister refuses to acknowledge is that FE colleges can’t provide the same quality of degree study as the universities do if the state doesn’t pay up to fund the same (expensive) resources – eg better libraries, more highly qualified teaching staff and so on. Why does it save money to pay into one pot what you’ve previously paid into another pot?
While he’s not admitting it at this stage, the logical implication of the Universities Minister’s proposals is that degree study will soon be delivered almost exclusively through distance-learning organisations such as the Open University. There will be a very few traditional universities offering the face to face learning experiences. Much of the remaining university sector will disappear, due to bankruptcy. How much will it cost to make all those academic staff redundant?
The numbers of students willing to embark on home-based, distance learning degree study will also reduce sharply – while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a dramatic fall off in the number of graduates over a very few years will have huge consequences for employers and the professions.
When the traditional universities lose out on degree study funding, they’ll be less able to fund their research function. Most research into the arts, humanities, business and pure science is done by universities and very little of this research is of the type that attracts paying customers. Research skills are most commonly taught in the universities by practising researchers. Universities’ loss of degree study funding will gradually impact on UK management’s ability to understand complex business and professional issues and develop solutions to them.
They’re still trying to dodge, aren’t they? Nobody really wants to face up to the problems over degree study, so they keep beating round the bush (should it be a graduate tax? Or a fee hike – again? Or should we just cut back a tinsy bit on the number of university places?) .
Let’s face it, government policy on degree study has been “ill advised”, shall we say, for the last 20 years.
Meer-Kate • 23rd September, 2010 at 8:10 pm
So it’ll be £9K tuition fee each year and students will be happy (cos they won’t have to pay back the costs of degree study until they’re earning a grad salary) and universities will be happy (cos the students’ dosh will keep them afloat) and the Coalition will be happy (cos government debt’ll go down).
Who the HELL do they think they’re kidding?
This is a funny money scam. So many grads won’t EVER pay back their tuition fees … so this debt’ll be a millstone round future governments’ necks in just the same way as it’ll blight the rest of our lives and careers.
What’s the hidden agenda here?
247x52 • 19th December, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Thomas Wiggins from Wokingham says it better than I do! See his letter in today’s Independent’s letters page:-
Due to the higher tuition fees the Government is going to have to loan up to £16bn to students each year so they can afford the higher cost of university education. To pay this loan back over its 30-year duration they need to earn an average salary of £38,000-40,000 per year.
Because of the lack of jobs paying salaries this high, the Government’s own figures estimate that 75 per cent will be unable to pay back their loans. As the Government has no plans to deal with the unpaid loans, in 30 years’ time the taxpayer will pay a heavy price for this short-sighted policy.
247x52 • 19th December, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Thought there was a hidden agenda, politicians aren’t as daft as they seem! See today’s Guardian on huge cuts being made to universities budgets before the £9K fees come in:-
“The government does not resile from the accusation that it seeks to withdraw state funding from the university sector. It believes higher education will flourish when a market is introduced that places greater emphasis on private involvement.”
247x52 • 20th December, 2010 at 8:59 am
See today’s “Independent”?
Article explains KPMG offers a new scheme that will pay salaries and Accountancy degree study costs for selected 18 year old recruits. Interestingly, they’re committing themselves to taking on disadvantaged students as part of this cohort.
This is obviously great news for the 18 year olds selected. KPMG, being a market leader, is likely to influence other accountancy firms and businesses to adopt the same approach.
Less benignly though, it’s another source of distortion. If it’s only students with commercially advantageous degrees that will be supported and the rest face huge debt burdens for most of their lives, universities will find themselves shutting down many of their academic departments because too few students take up subjects like French, English, History, Geography, Biology, Physics, Chemistry ……
Meer-Kate • 14th January, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Funny how things pan out ….
Surprise, surprise the prestige universities are queuing up to say “we’ll charge the £9K max”. Nick Clegg and co can do sod all about that, whatever they’d like us to believe.
Next off, “figures disclosed yesterday show that a record 22,000 UK youngsters have opted for full-time study overseas” says the Independent.
So you make a UK degree unaffordable, UK students push off and do their degrees anywhere that offers cheaper education (in English!) and then you close down most of the British universities ….
I can’t see the point of this, even from the government’s point of view.
Kriminal • 16th February, 2011 at 9:33 pm
NOW the Audit Office says hiking tuition fees puts universities at greater risk of going bankrupt, surprise, surprise.
Is the government really that stupid? Didn’t they realise the risks of their policies?
sparra • 4th March, 2011 at 12:15 pm
They are that stupid. Silly me to think they couldn’t be.
Govt can’t afford it when almost every good uni says it’ll charge £9K BUT the voters won’t stand for cutting student places as savagely as they now need to do. What to do? I know, says Willetts. We’ll let the rich kids in off quota, charge them twice as much for degree study and that way we’ll keep the show on the road a bit longer.
sparra • 10th May, 2011 at 3:52 pm
ConDem knickers are in a right twist but it won’t help us. Setting up private universities – their crummy latest Big Idea – lets them off the hook a bit (“go private if the public sector universities are going bankrupt and there aren’t any places – you know it makes sense”).
Doesn’t help the real universities any and just makes employers suspicious about the quality of ALL graduates’ degrees. Why don’t the ConDems go the whole hog and say if you’ve got a printed document from an online degree study “university”, that means you’ve got a degree and you’re a graduate? After all, it would save them money too!
Dring • 28th June, 2011 at 11:12 am
5 months down the line and the government’s ideas on degree study are still unravelling …
Deputy Dawg • 5th November, 2011 at 11:01 am
The Guardian shows that all the trad universities (and some of those that aren’t) will be charging £9K fees in 2012. They say the govt hadn’t counted on them doing so and won’t be able to afford the upfront fees. If govt cuts university places to the bone, it’ll bankrupt some universities as well as hacking off lots of parents, students and schools.
We need a Plan B for degree study just as much as for the economy.
grey-grad • 6th November, 2011 at 3:43 pm
The degree study fiasco’s getting more complicated as each month goes by. Is it true students won’t even know what the fees are by the time they apply to uni? And that it’s likely the late applicants might not have to pay as much as the ones who’ve already got places?
Confused.
Donkey • 18th November, 2011 at 6:10 pm