Three half-myths about the government's university funding plans
Some thoughts I've been carrying around with me for weeks (usually while reacting "But... But..." to someone else's thoughts) and have finally got onto pixels.
Half-myth 1: The government will no longer be funding most university teaching.
This is certainly true in the sense that the government will no longer be giving grants to universities for most teaching, but where is the money coming from instead? Students' fees. But from where will the students be getting the money to pay those fees? A scheme arranged by the government with private-sector money that will supposedly be getting the money back from students, after graduation, at commercial interest rates or even slightly above.
But, as the government has repeatedly stated, the idea isn't to load graduates with impossible levels of debt. Indeed, until they are earning over £20,000 per year, graduates won't have to pay back a penny and the interest accruing on the debts will only cover inflation. Even above that, the repayments and the interest are geared to their income, so that graduates won't get hit by the full effects until they are earning at least £40,000 in current terms. And after 30 years, any remaining loans will be written off.
Now, this will certainly be no picnic for the graduates concerned. Above £20,000, they will be paying back 9% of their gross income, collected through their tax bills. Which will effectively mean that, after this and income tax and national insurance, they won't be seeing more than 60% of their earnings. But, for those earning less that £40,000 for much of their careers (in practice, most graduates), who will be paying the shortfall on their loan repayments?
Well, to some extent, higher-earning graduates - but the government modelling of this looks to be, er, slightly over-optimistic. So, who else? Not the lenders - their money is being guaranteed. Who by? The government, of course.
So, after all, the government (and taxpayers) will still be funding university teaching - several decades in arrears.
Half-myth 2: The government is stripping the humanities of all teaching funding but protecting that for STEM subjects.
Again, partly true but not wholly. The government is indeed withdrawing all the standard grants for humanities teaching (though there may, or may not, be some for specific and often temporary initiatives) and leaving it to universities to get back the money (or not) in student fees, but it is also withdrawing the same amount in grants per student for science and engineering teaching. The difference is that it will still be paying grants supposed to cover the extra - but not the basic - teaching costs of these subjects.
The subjects that actually look like suffering the most are the ones which have higher teaching costs than most of the humanities but probably don't get covered by the STEM umbrella - fine art, design, social work and paramedical training. And, listening to random government pronouncements, quite possibly subjects that you might expect to be covered by STEM - psychology, mathematics, computing, architecture. Teacher and nursing training may be safe, but only because they are mostly funded separately from the rest of university teaching anyway.
By cutting corners on some aspects of quality, universities might even be able to offer some humanities degrees for, say, £5,000. But for most of those I have just listed, the facilities required probably rule out any fees much below the government's maximum £9,000.
Half-myth 3: The government is abandoning most university teaching to market forces.
To which my response is to groan hard and mutter "If only...". That's not because I think that doing so would actually be a good idea - it's because it would still be a better deal for universities than what looks like happening.
At first sight, it looks as if the government is indeed abandoning university teaching to market forces. A university's teaching income will come overwhelmingly through tuition fees, and will therefore depend on how many students it has studying on its courses. And surely it is up to potential students to decide which university and which course, and universities to decide which courses to run and which students to take.
If this were the case just as stated, then the market would indeed rule. If a university established that there was greater demand for a BA in Casino and Brothel Management than for its BA in Medieval History, then if costs were equal, it would prefer to offer the former or, over time, lose money and go bankrupt. But that presumes that the student, within market constraints, has a free choice.
Until now, to within a changing but always known approximation, that has been the case. If the student has fulfilled certain announced criteria (in terms of residence, qualifications etc.) and the university and course has met others (including, from time to time, caps on the numbers of students each university could accept), the student has been automatically entitled to a package of grants and/or loans to cover fees and maintenance costs. However, the government has now said that the entitlement will no longer be automatic. There will still be criteria but the government will not only be able to change these, without prior announcement and apparently according to whim, at any time but actually expects to do so regularly.
So, the potential student applies to a university for a course, gets accepted - and then finds the government refuses them access to loans, for reasons not announced beforehand, and perhaps not annouced at all. Possibly because they chose to apply for Casino and Brothel Management. Possibly because they got A-levels but the government then announced that their grades weren't good enough for university this year (though they would have been last year). Possibly because they have a criminal record. Possibly because they have red hair. Possibly because the government thought the university wasn't admitting enough students with red hair. Possibly because the university was offering a course in Casino and Brothel Management (even though the student was applying for Medieval History). Possibly because the university hadn't sacked some lecturers who had supported student demos against government policy. Possibly because the university hadn't expelled the students on those demos. Possibly because...
A university is certainly not Tesco - but I wouldn't expect restrictions like these at Tesco.
In brief: however bad the myth, there's always room to do worse still (sometimes while complaining about the inaccuracy of the myth).
Half-myth 1: The government will no longer be funding most university teaching.
This is certainly true in the sense that the government will no longer be giving grants to universities for most teaching, but where is the money coming from instead? Students' fees. But from where will the students be getting the money to pay those fees? A scheme arranged by the government with private-sector money that will supposedly be getting the money back from students, after graduation, at commercial interest rates or even slightly above.
But, as the government has repeatedly stated, the idea isn't to load graduates with impossible levels of debt. Indeed, until they are earning over £20,000 per year, graduates won't have to pay back a penny and the interest accruing on the debts will only cover inflation. Even above that, the repayments and the interest are geared to their income, so that graduates won't get hit by the full effects until they are earning at least £40,000 in current terms. And after 30 years, any remaining loans will be written off.
Now, this will certainly be no picnic for the graduates concerned. Above £20,000, they will be paying back 9% of their gross income, collected through their tax bills. Which will effectively mean that, after this and income tax and national insurance, they won't be seeing more than 60% of their earnings. But, for those earning less that £40,000 for much of their careers (in practice, most graduates), who will be paying the shortfall on their loan repayments?
Well, to some extent, higher-earning graduates - but the government modelling of this looks to be, er, slightly over-optimistic. So, who else? Not the lenders - their money is being guaranteed. Who by? The government, of course.
So, after all, the government (and taxpayers) will still be funding university teaching - several decades in arrears.
Half-myth 2: The government is stripping the humanities of all teaching funding but protecting that for STEM subjects.
Again, partly true but not wholly. The government is indeed withdrawing all the standard grants for humanities teaching (though there may, or may not, be some for specific and often temporary initiatives) and leaving it to universities to get back the money (or not) in student fees, but it is also withdrawing the same amount in grants per student for science and engineering teaching. The difference is that it will still be paying grants supposed to cover the extra - but not the basic - teaching costs of these subjects.
The subjects that actually look like suffering the most are the ones which have higher teaching costs than most of the humanities but probably don't get covered by the STEM umbrella - fine art, design, social work and paramedical training. And, listening to random government pronouncements, quite possibly subjects that you might expect to be covered by STEM - psychology, mathematics, computing, architecture. Teacher and nursing training may be safe, but only because they are mostly funded separately from the rest of university teaching anyway.
By cutting corners on some aspects of quality, universities might even be able to offer some humanities degrees for, say, £5,000. But for most of those I have just listed, the facilities required probably rule out any fees much below the government's maximum £9,000.
Half-myth 3: The government is abandoning most university teaching to market forces.
To which my response is to groan hard and mutter "If only...". That's not because I think that doing so would actually be a good idea - it's because it would still be a better deal for universities than what looks like happening.
At first sight, it looks as if the government is indeed abandoning university teaching to market forces. A university's teaching income will come overwhelmingly through tuition fees, and will therefore depend on how many students it has studying on its courses. And surely it is up to potential students to decide which university and which course, and universities to decide which courses to run and which students to take.
If this were the case just as stated, then the market would indeed rule. If a university established that there was greater demand for a BA in Casino and Brothel Management than for its BA in Medieval History, then if costs were equal, it would prefer to offer the former or, over time, lose money and go bankrupt. But that presumes that the student, within market constraints, has a free choice.
Until now, to within a changing but always known approximation, that has been the case. If the student has fulfilled certain announced criteria (in terms of residence, qualifications etc.) and the university and course has met others (including, from time to time, caps on the numbers of students each university could accept), the student has been automatically entitled to a package of grants and/or loans to cover fees and maintenance costs. However, the government has now said that the entitlement will no longer be automatic. There will still be criteria but the government will not only be able to change these, without prior announcement and apparently according to whim, at any time but actually expects to do so regularly.
So, the potential student applies to a university for a course, gets accepted - and then finds the government refuses them access to loans, for reasons not announced beforehand, and perhaps not annouced at all. Possibly because they chose to apply for Casino and Brothel Management. Possibly because they got A-levels but the government then announced that their grades weren't good enough for university this year (though they would have been last year). Possibly because they have a criminal record. Possibly because they have red hair. Possibly because the government thought the university wasn't admitting enough students with red hair. Possibly because the university was offering a course in Casino and Brothel Management (even though the student was applying for Medieval History). Possibly because the university hadn't sacked some lecturers who had supported student demos against government policy. Possibly because the university hadn't expelled the students on those demos. Possibly because...
A university is certainly not Tesco - but I wouldn't expect restrictions like these at Tesco.
In brief: however bad the myth, there's always room to do worse still (sometimes while complaining about the inaccuracy of the myth).