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TERRY DIGNAN: In higher education governments
of all colours have gone for rapid growth. But politicians haven't been
so keen on providing the money to pay for the vast increase in student
numbers. That's put our university system under unprecedented strain.
And that means that funding is top of the agenda at the latest meeting
of Vice-Chancellors in England. Some are now demanding that universities
should be allowed to set their own tuition fees.
No one here expects
Tony Blair or William Hague to find more money for universities by promising
at the next election to put up taxes. So the leaders of our institutions
of higher learning are looking at another, no-less controversial, suggestion
- asking the better off to make a bigger financial contribution to the
cost of their university degree. Even though politicians run scared of
the idea, some warn there may be no alternative.
PROFESSOR SIR HOWARD NEWBY: These days parties really don't want
to say, vote for us in an election and we'll put up taxes, in order to
give more money to universities. I don't think we see that as a realistic
proposition.
DIGNAN: After four hard years of
Labour, these Vice-Chancellors may now have something to look forward to.
From April, Labour intends spending an extra ten per cent on their universities
over a three year period.
BARONESS BLACKSTONE: In this next funding round there's
another one point seven billion pounds, that is a lot of extra money, as
well as another billion for research. For the first time since 1986 the
actual amount of money that universities will have per student is going
up, so I think that's an enormous step forward.
PROFESSOR TIME O'SHEA: It doesn't get us back to the sort
of funding the universities had fifteen years ago and if you just do an
audit, and you just look at it and see the state of university buildings,
the state of salaries, that ten per cent will help, but it will not get
us where we need to be.
PROFESSOR GILLIAN SLATER: Many universities have buildings
that are falling down for lack of maintenance. So there is a long way
to go, in terms of increased funding.
PROFESSOR JOHN TARRANT: It varies a lot from subject to
subject, institution to institution, but in my institution the average
staff student ratio is now almost twice as bad as it was about ten years
ago.
DIGNAN: A university education
is no longer the privilege of a few. Forty years ago less than two hundred
thousand students were in higher education, just five per cent of young
adults. By 1987 the proportion was up to fifteen per cent. There were
a million full time students when Tony Blair came to power. Today thirty-six
per cent of young people are in higher education - Labour is aiming for
fifty per cent.
But the money going into higher education has failed to match the massive
increase in undergraduate numbers. In nineteen-eighty-five average spending
per university student was almost eight-thousand-five-hundred pounds. By
nineteen-ninety-seven - with the polytechnics having gained university
status - the money was being spread more thinly and the average spend per
student was down to just over four- thousand-seven-hundred-and-ninety pounds.
The decline in funding has continued under Labour although that's about
to end.
PROFESSOR ALAN SMITHERS: One of the mysteries to me is
why successive governments have seemed determined to destroy higher education
as we knew it. The amount of funding universities receive has been reduced
by about forty per cent over the past decade. At the same time they've
been asked to undertake massive expansion, this has had all sorts of consequences
in terms of the quality of student experience, the amount of money available
for libraries, for general facilities for cleaning and portering and so
on.
DIGNAN: The Government expects
the older research-intensive institutions to compete on a global scale
for the best students, academics and research. Yet these are the universities
- whose courses tend to be the ones heaviest in demand amongst undergraduates
- that often feel hardest hit by the decline in funding.
SIR COLIN CAMPBELL: The big universities in the
States have access to hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars
and we can't match that. Now if we want to really invest in heavy, expensive
science as we do as a country, to be internationally competitive, we need
access to much greater sources of funding.
DIGNAN: While the universities
want more investment for research, technology and teaching, the Liberal
Democrats' would rather concentrate help on students, especially those
from poorer backgrounds. They'd abolish tuition fees and re-introduce
maintenance grants.
DR EVAN HARRIS MP: What we would expand significantly
is the number of people from poorer backgrounds who are bright, who are
able to benefit from higher education, who have been prevented from applying
or staying in the system by the government's mean-minded decision, which
wasn't in their manifesto, to make them even poorer by cutting their grants.
DIGNAN: The Conservatives say their
policies will address universities' needs. But not through higher taxes
or spending. They'd release higher education from dependence on Government
funding. Every university would be eligible for a lump sum endowment raised
from the proceeds of future privatisations. But the Tories concede it
would take many years for all institutions of higher education to benefit
from this policy.
THERESA MAY MP: The sums required to endow universities
are significant and it will take time to provide for all universities,
but I think the university sector needs a new approach, the funding arrangements
we have currently are not working for all our universities and we need
to move our universities on to a new approach where they can rely on endowed
funds and they can be free to bring in more private sector income.
SLATER: The sums involved would
need to be very very large because I don't believe it will be acceptable
to provide endowment funding for ten universities, and leave the other
ninety without.
DIGNAN: Universities want the politicians
to be realistic about funding higher education. If higher taxes or a bigger
share of public spending are ruled out that leaves the option of extracting
more money from those who benefit from higher education. And that could
mean allowing universities to set their own tuition fees.
All students in the UK - except for Scottish students in Scotland - are
now sent a bill for tuition to be paid up-front. But only the well-off
pay in full, about a thousand pounds. Here at Nottingham, the Vice-Chancellor
says students could afford to pay more, given that they stand to benefit
considerably from a university education.
CAMPBELL: People who can afford
it should pay, up to a modest limit. They are beneficiaries to the extent
of four-hundred-thousand upwards in their life time, they can afford to
pay, they should pay.
PROFESSOR SIR HOWARD NEWBY: I think most people now accept that
people who go through higher education have some moral obligation to put
something back. Our graduates do benefit in terms of employability and
higher incomes later in life and of course they do put something back
through the tax system but I think also most people would accept that they
should make some direct payment as well.
DIGNAN: If universities are allowed
to set their own fees, that might deter more students from poorer backgrounds.
It's why Scotland abolished fees. One answer would be to delay paying
until after graduation - with repayments rising only in line with income.
PROFESSOR SANDRA BURSLEM: There is I think a real barrier against
people from lower socio-economic groups coming in to higher education.
That's not justifiable. So I think that we've got to be very careful
about how we expect those sorts of students to contribute to their higher
education.
DIGNAN: But universities like Nottingham
say they need the money now. They want to ask for extra up-front payments.
Students from poorer backgrounds would be offered scholarships. The burden
of paying the extra fees might well fall on middle-income families - which
may explain why the Conservatives are against the idea, an attitude which
sits oddly with their promise to set universities free.
MAY: There is legislation
that restricts the fees that universities can charge. I think it's important
that endowed universities are on a level playing field and therefore endowed
universities, alongside the other universities, will not be able to charge
top up fees.
UNNAMED MAN: The concept of a transfer
function.
DIGNAN: Labour, too, believes that
the Government, rather than the universities, should continue to decide
the amount students should pay in tuition fees - outside Scotland, that
is.
BLACKSTONE: The Government doesn't think
it would be right for them to charge students according to their particular
view of what they can afford. It is far better to have a regulated system
of fees which we introduced. It is then possible to have a national system
that is understood, rather than have a free market where people are confused
about what different places are charging. So the government is, in fact,
confident that the system that we've introduced is a fair one, it is getting
more money into the universities and I wouldn't want to go down the differential
top-up fee route.
CAMPBELL: I think the hard question
is for Baroness Blackstone and her colleagues because they will be asked
the question increasingly - are you investing adequately to maintain the
universities to be internationally competitive and to give first class
education to the brightest of the young generation? Now the answer to
that is no, so something will have to give, I think it will give after
the election.
DIGNAN: In Manchester the Vice-Chancellors
who attended the meeting of the Higher Education Funding Council are all
members of Universities UK. It has a working party looking at a range
of options to increase funding. Even though top-up fees feature prominently,
ministers say there's no consensus among Vice-Chancellors in their favour.
BLACKSTONE: I think the majority of them
are not in favour of top up fees, so I think that the advice that we will
get from them will be consistent with the way we view things at present.
DIGNAN: But amongst Vice-Chancellors,
there's a potential premier league which may not allow the majority of
less prestigious universities to make policy on their behalf.
UNNAMED MAN: "Ladies and gentlemen."
DIGNAN: The top UK universities
may grow increasingly frustrated if they're not allowed to exploit their
market strength.
SMITHERS: There are universities
that would be able to attract students because they have many more students
than they have places, being able to charge their own fees, to price their
own courses, would be a considerable advantage to them in the quality of
the higher education they could offer. Universities that aren't able to
fill their places at the moment would wonder whether it would be even more
difficult in future circumstances.
HARRIS: For the government to ignore
that threat, not put the funding in that's required, will lead inexorably
to top-up fees. Significantly they refuse to rule it out for the whole
of the next parliament, they just say they have no plans, that's the same
language they used within a year of implementing tuition fees and scrapping
grants when they said they have no plans.
CAMPBELL: It is established government
policy that they're not going to change the position for the time being.
But I think after the election, when whichever government has another
four or five years to look ahead, they'll have to confront this issue,
it's inescapable.
DIGNAN: Despite the cuts to university
funding over many years, this country remains in the world elite of higher
education, but for how much longer? Politicians fear students' parents
would be furious if universities introduce top-up fees. Parents could
of course demand to pay higher taxes instead, but few Vice-Chancellors
take that prospect seriously.
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