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 "The news that universities find themselves a billion pounds short of what they need to carry out their teaching and research is no surprise to anyone who works in one."
Professor Ted Wragg | | |  University funding - are you prepared to pay?Lines open at 1.30pm, and the number to call is 0870 010 0444 | |
It is essential that the government ploughs more money into the system very soon, otherwise its own target of 50% of young people going to university will be unattainable.
And that means that you, the taxpayer, are going to have to be prepared to pay even more to foot the eventual bill.
In a relatively short time in our history, we have moved - quite rightly in my view - from an elite to a mass system of higher education.
After the Second World War, fewer than one in twenty of university age actually went to university. By the 1970s and '80s, one in seven or eight was entering higher education. This year, the figure is already over a third. Higher education is rapidly becoming the norm, not the exception.
Yet the funding of universities has declined considerably in real terms. Nowadays we are penalised if we overfill our places and fined if we underfill them. Managing this huge and generally unplanned expansion is a nightmare.
For a start, the assumption has been that taking more students is a breeze and that the extra costs are merely marginal. There are already buildings, staff, courses, it is argued - so stick a few more chairs in the lecture theatres and talk to 120 instead of 100. No problem.
The difficulty with this simple-minded solution is that many students enter higher education today with lower entry grades than their predecessors, so large-scale lectures aren't a good solution. Nor will the situation improve as the system expands still further.
The difference between the 34% who enter university now and the 50% government target is some 100,000 extra students a year. Many will have reached higher education by quite novel routes, like vocational GCSEs and a modern apprenticeship, before signing up for one of the new style two-year foundation degrees. More individual help and tuition is needed for those who might struggle, rather than even bigger lecture groups.
Universities are not as sexy to governments as primary and secondary schools. Many are now having to consider pulling out of teaching key subjects like physics, or concentrating more on research, simply to stay in business - indeed in the late 80's, Cardiff University nearly went bankrupt.
If public money is in short supply, effort will simply have to be transferred into the sort of work that attracts more private funding.
Money alone isn't the answer, but neither is government stinginess.
I am strongly in favour of more young people having the opportunity for university study that I had as the first member of my family to receive it, but money must pay for three essential features:
- additional staff, so that those who need it…especially first generation students… can be given more individual tuition and support;
- additional equipment, especially for students who have come up through a more practical route and learn better by doing than by listening;
- the very best interactive information and communications technology possible, so that learning can take place at home as well as in the university.
These are essentials, not luxuries. Without them, the 50% participation target will soon look pretty sick.
by Professor Ted Wragg, Professor of Education, Exeter University
Lines open at 1.30pm, and the number to call is 0870 010 0444
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RELATED LINKS | | | - Department of Education, Exeter University
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