Students to Fund Budget Deficit?
Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announces plans to cut millions from university budgets. Politicians will look to tuition fees review to plug the spending gap, says NUS President Wes Streeting.
The Government has announced that the Treasury is to significantly reduce its funding of universities across the UK by a total of £600 million.
The details of the reduction were outlined in the Government’s pre-Budget report in December, which also stated that the cuts will become entrenched in public spending policy by 2012-2013.
The announcement has prompted widespread speculation from leading figures across the sector about which areas will be most affected, and the specific implications the reductions will have for universities and students. Labour’s Higher Education Minister, MP David Lammy, emphasised that decisions about how the cuts will be distributed had not yet been made, but with the cuts almost certain to create a vast fiscal deficit on university ledgers, it is feared that the financial burden will be transferred onto students in the form of higher tuition fees. NUS President, Wes Streeting, warned that "some vice-chancellors and politicians will now look to the current review of tuition fees to plug the spending gap".
The proposals have also caused concerns as to whether the quality of scientific research from UK universities will be able to continue to compete on a global scale. According to Universities UK, the UK currently lies second in a league of countries which are most important to the production of scientific research in the world.
Despite the fact that the UK houses only 1% of the global population, it is responsible for producing 8% of the world’s leading scientific papers, with a citation share of 12%, a record second only to the US. With the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) being one of these centres of excellence for producing leading scientific research, the UEA is likely to become one of the biggest casualties of the proposed cuts.
Representatives of UEA’s Students’ Union voiced their concerns over the impact that "such vicious cuts" would have on UEA students and its research reputation. The Academic Officer, David Sheppard, predicts "serious repercussions on the quality of education and research" at UEA, adding that any "attempts to plug the funding gap with an increase in student fees" would be "disastrous".
But the proposed cuts have coincided with the ongoing independent review into fees and higher education funding being conducted by Lord Browne. It is believed that he will now be forced to recommend that the Government lift the cap on tuition fees, which currently stands at £3,225 a year, in order for universities to maintain ‘real term’ funding levels.
The current funding system operates according to a "unit of resource" scheme – a "unit" representing a fixed sum that universities receive per student – which it has been calculated will be reduced by approximately £1,000 per student, per annum, once the cuts have been implemented. Raising tuition fees is understood to offer the best solution for universities looking to recoup the deficit and maintain the high standards.
The Government has been heavily criticised for its decision, particularly as the UK commits a lower percentage of its GDP to higher education than most other global research competitors. In 2006 the UK invested 1.3% of it GDP in higher education, compared with 2.9% for the US, 2.7% for Canada, and 1.6% for Australia.
As an area of government spending which isn’t ring-fenced, the universities budget is likely to take a big hit as the government aims to halve the national deficit over the next four years.
Sources have suggested that of the £600 million universities budget cuts that have been outlined, most can be ‘found from the student-support budget’.
David Churchill
