Matt N
CF Legend
Hi guys. If you’ve been keeping the news lately, you may have seen that Cardiff University in Wales is cutting 400 jobs and axing courses as a sustainability measure for the future (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k5n0k101lo). Courses being cut include all courses in modern foreign languages, music, ancient history, theology and nursing. This is in order to finance a £31m deficit in the university’s budget for the coming year.
Cardiff is not the only UK university cutting jobs and costs, however. My undergraduate university was merging schools and aggressively cutting costs in my last year or so there, and plenty of other unis are doing the same. Whole departments are going under, and jobs are being lost in academia around the country. There are talks of big universities potentially going bankrupt and needing to be bailed out in the next year or so. Yet on the flip side, all of this is coming off the back of £9,000 per year tuition fees, and the increasing reputation among the wider populace that university is “an expensive scam”. Students are already paying through the nose, but the universities are still facing financial peril.
In my view, something is evidently very, very wrong in the UK’s higher education sector. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; what are your thoughts on the situation in the higher education sector in the UK? What do you think the future holds for the sector? How would you solve some of the crippling issues, such as university cash flow?
Personally, I think the situation is very concerning, for a multitude of reasons.
As much as some may be dismissive of a university education’s relevance, I am personally a firm believer in the benefits of higher education. I feel that it gives you a true deep understanding of subject matter you’re passionate about and teaches you a number of important study and learning skills as a result. As much as you may not directly apply all of it to your job or similar in future, I think that having that theoretical, academic understanding of a chosen subject can be greatly beneficial both directly and indirectly, and the university study style teaches you other crucial transferable skills such as critical thinking (an increasingly important skill in this era of misinformation, I would argue!). If the sector cuts and cuts and cuts, there will be less choice for students, a poorer experience, and eventually, the important skills offered by a university education may be inaccessible to a great many.
The value of a degree is also arguably diluted if universities are having to rely increasingly on quantity of students to pay the bills. As a Cardiff student, I was able to read some of the consultation documents behind the announced cuts (we all received an email from the Vice Chancellor with a link to them), and there were some eye-opening revelations. One such revelation was that entry tariffs have notably decreased in recent years and flexibility in offers has notably increased in order to keep bums on seats and keep money flowing in; in Maths, for example, the documents stated that students were being let in with Maths A Level grades as low as a C. If everyone and their dog can go to university, that arguably dilutes the value of degrees.
I also feel these developments are concerning because they appear to disproportionately target certain subject areas over others, namely social studies and the arts. The Cardiff cuts, for example, propose the complete closure of modern foreign languages, music, ancient history and theology at Cardiff University, and the notable paring back of other social studies, arts and humanities subjects. While these subjects may not perform as well in terms of “students in employment or further study within 15 months of graduating”, as, say, many STEM subjects or something like medicine or dentistry, I feel that they are still very important, and if we cut back on these subjects, it may have a profound cultural impact. Without music, we have no musicians. Without MFL, we lose crucial knowledge of other languages and cultures. Without arts subjects, we have no creativity. Without history, we lose vital knowledge of our ancestors and roots. You hear a lot of people wax lyrical about “Mickey Mouse degrees”, and how STEM subjects are the only worthwhile things to study at uni, and as a STEM student, I arguably have somewhat of a vested interest in agreeing with this rhetoric. However, I’m not going to. Social studies and the arts are still really, really important subjects that play huge roles in our society and culture, and I fear that the dilution of these may be hugely impactful in the years to come.
So how do we go about solving this predicament that many UK universities find themselves in? Personally, I think a lot of it boils down to the funding model. Tuition fees are an utterly flawed system of funding, and I’d argue that they present a lose-lose situation at present. Students are already (ostensibly) paying £9,000 per year to study at university, yet that clearly isn’t sufficient funding for our universities. They are having to rely on a dwindling number of international students, who pay uncapped fees, to stay afloat. There clearly needs to be more money coming from somewhere, but we can’t just continually hike tuition fees ad infinitum.
However, I don’t think free tuition fees, as proposed by many left-wing parties, are the answer either. This would cost money the country doesn’t have, or if it does have it, it should frankly be spent on more important things than subsidising universal higher education. As much of an advocate as I am for higher education, I don’t feel it’s the right path for everyone, and I think free tuition fees would only serve to push everyone to university at 18 when it might not be right for them, and further the issue of diluting the value of a university education.
One idea I am increasingly receptive to is a graduate tax. In essence, a graduate tax sees all graduates charged a tax for their entire working lives that scales up and down depending on how high their salary is, with higher salaries paying a higher rate of tax. The revenue from this tax would then be ring fenced for use in higher education. I am a believer in this idea for a couple of reasons. The first is that it removes the student perception of “£27,000 in debt”, which might implore poorer students to explore university when they may have been put off by the notion of crushing debt. The second is that it provides a more reliable income stream for the Treasury and universities than the current system; currently, lots of people never pay off their student loan in full, and quite a few barely pay it off at all, so there is considerable government subsidy going on. Thirdly, it would also be egalitarian, with people who get the most value from their degree paying the most back into universities; surely it makes sense for those who benefit the most from university to pay the most back into it, does it not?
But I’d be keen to know; what are your thoughts on the current situation in higher education in the UK? What do you feel the future holds for the sector, and how do you feel the issues should be solved?
Cardiff is not the only UK university cutting jobs and costs, however. My undergraduate university was merging schools and aggressively cutting costs in my last year or so there, and plenty of other unis are doing the same. Whole departments are going under, and jobs are being lost in academia around the country. There are talks of big universities potentially going bankrupt and needing to be bailed out in the next year or so. Yet on the flip side, all of this is coming off the back of £9,000 per year tuition fees, and the increasing reputation among the wider populace that university is “an expensive scam”. Students are already paying through the nose, but the universities are still facing financial peril.
In my view, something is evidently very, very wrong in the UK’s higher education sector. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; what are your thoughts on the situation in the higher education sector in the UK? What do you think the future holds for the sector? How would you solve some of the crippling issues, such as university cash flow?
Personally, I think the situation is very concerning, for a multitude of reasons.
As much as some may be dismissive of a university education’s relevance, I am personally a firm believer in the benefits of higher education. I feel that it gives you a true deep understanding of subject matter you’re passionate about and teaches you a number of important study and learning skills as a result. As much as you may not directly apply all of it to your job or similar in future, I think that having that theoretical, academic understanding of a chosen subject can be greatly beneficial both directly and indirectly, and the university study style teaches you other crucial transferable skills such as critical thinking (an increasingly important skill in this era of misinformation, I would argue!). If the sector cuts and cuts and cuts, there will be less choice for students, a poorer experience, and eventually, the important skills offered by a university education may be inaccessible to a great many.
The value of a degree is also arguably diluted if universities are having to rely increasingly on quantity of students to pay the bills. As a Cardiff student, I was able to read some of the consultation documents behind the announced cuts (we all received an email from the Vice Chancellor with a link to them), and there were some eye-opening revelations. One such revelation was that entry tariffs have notably decreased in recent years and flexibility in offers has notably increased in order to keep bums on seats and keep money flowing in; in Maths, for example, the documents stated that students were being let in with Maths A Level grades as low as a C. If everyone and their dog can go to university, that arguably dilutes the value of degrees.
I also feel these developments are concerning because they appear to disproportionately target certain subject areas over others, namely social studies and the arts. The Cardiff cuts, for example, propose the complete closure of modern foreign languages, music, ancient history and theology at Cardiff University, and the notable paring back of other social studies, arts and humanities subjects. While these subjects may not perform as well in terms of “students in employment or further study within 15 months of graduating”, as, say, many STEM subjects or something like medicine or dentistry, I feel that they are still very important, and if we cut back on these subjects, it may have a profound cultural impact. Without music, we have no musicians. Without MFL, we lose crucial knowledge of other languages and cultures. Without arts subjects, we have no creativity. Without history, we lose vital knowledge of our ancestors and roots. You hear a lot of people wax lyrical about “Mickey Mouse degrees”, and how STEM subjects are the only worthwhile things to study at uni, and as a STEM student, I arguably have somewhat of a vested interest in agreeing with this rhetoric. However, I’m not going to. Social studies and the arts are still really, really important subjects that play huge roles in our society and culture, and I fear that the dilution of these may be hugely impactful in the years to come.
So how do we go about solving this predicament that many UK universities find themselves in? Personally, I think a lot of it boils down to the funding model. Tuition fees are an utterly flawed system of funding, and I’d argue that they present a lose-lose situation at present. Students are already (ostensibly) paying £9,000 per year to study at university, yet that clearly isn’t sufficient funding for our universities. They are having to rely on a dwindling number of international students, who pay uncapped fees, to stay afloat. There clearly needs to be more money coming from somewhere, but we can’t just continually hike tuition fees ad infinitum.
However, I don’t think free tuition fees, as proposed by many left-wing parties, are the answer either. This would cost money the country doesn’t have, or if it does have it, it should frankly be spent on more important things than subsidising universal higher education. As much of an advocate as I am for higher education, I don’t feel it’s the right path for everyone, and I think free tuition fees would only serve to push everyone to university at 18 when it might not be right for them, and further the issue of diluting the value of a university education.
One idea I am increasingly receptive to is a graduate tax. In essence, a graduate tax sees all graduates charged a tax for their entire working lives that scales up and down depending on how high their salary is, with higher salaries paying a higher rate of tax. The revenue from this tax would then be ring fenced for use in higher education. I am a believer in this idea for a couple of reasons. The first is that it removes the student perception of “£27,000 in debt”, which might implore poorer students to explore university when they may have been put off by the notion of crushing debt. The second is that it provides a more reliable income stream for the Treasury and universities than the current system; currently, lots of people never pay off their student loan in full, and quite a few barely pay it off at all, so there is considerable government subsidy going on. Thirdly, it would also be egalitarian, with people who get the most value from their degree paying the most back into universities; surely it makes sense for those who benefit the most from university to pay the most back into it, does it not?
But I’d be keen to know; what are your thoughts on the current situation in higher education in the UK? What do you feel the future holds for the sector, and how do you feel the issues should be solved?
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