Question for any university employees

[MumblesParty]

Just reading the news about Cardiff uni, among others, having to make redundancies and cut courses. This is apparently due to dropping numbers of international students. Students tuition fees are £9500 per year. They have about 9 hours of lectures per week. Can anyone explain where the costs are? I’m not being argumentative, I would genuinely like to know why it costs so much to run a university. I’ve googled, and it seems the biggest cost is teaching. But I know lecturers aren’t paid much. So where does the money go?

Big fancy buildings that look good, but with fewer lecturers to teach in them.
Managerial salaries, i.e. for the bean counters who decide if courses are profitable or not.
Universities are run like companies now.

Buildings, tech, support staff, libraries, well being teams, labs, lab consumables, publishing costs, etc etc.

And the senior management team's massive salaries.

Said as someone who took voluntary severance last year.

teaching buildings, libraries, IT, sports facilities, accommodation, labs, equipment, social facilities, teaching staff, support staff, security staff, technicians, cleaning staff, catering staff, etc etc

pensions are a massive cost, particularly if the universities have people in the LGPS.

wage bill is high and due to union presence its very difficult to change anything.

some teaching staff are on very very high salaries, a professor can be earning considerably in excess of £100k

Here is a breakdown, OP

https://www.savethestudent.org/news/what-tuition-fees-get-spent-on.html

I agree costs of student wellbeing and support are massive. Expectations for facilities are high. Removing the cap on student numbers incentivised spending on marketing. Licencing, hardware and estates costs, especially for Stem, mean that these degrees are often cross subsided by others.

Teaching salaries are actually pretty decent. Staff costs are the main overhead by a long way. It also takes a lot of professional/support staff in the background to keep things running.

That seems extortionate for only 9 hours of lectures a week. The courses which have 28 hours of lectures a week cost the same. I had lectures almost full time, plus lots of fieldwork trips included and it cost no more than other degrees with way less teaching time. Is it worth it?

Don’t forget student health and wellbeing services, occupational health for staff, clubs and activities, running the libraries, laboratories, student cafes and canteens (which probably aren’t self-sustaining on sales alone). I’m pretty sure it does not go on teaching staff. Most of us are largely if not entirely (like me) funded by external research funding sources. I lecture and my salary does not come at all from student fees.

I mean, think of private secondary schools. They cost about £7000 per term x 3. With significantly less in terms of staff, facilities, provision.

Welsh Universities have also lost millions in grant funding after Brexit. Structural Funds supported numerous research and development projects.

https://www.bufdg.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/understanding-finance/ here you go @MumblesParty

and https://wonkhe.com/blogs/an-early-look-at-2023-24-university-finances/

credit for both links to a longstanding poster from another HE specific thread

Same overheads all businesses have. Buildings upkeep, utilities, provision of student housing (capital cost), increased NI contributions, increased pension contributions, increased insurance, costs of running labs and libraries and keeping up with technology etc etc.

UK tuition fees have been kept to what they are because international fees have subsidised them. Fewer people are coming since Brexit and because of the racist undertones portrayed by the media! The cost of living here is now making studying here less attractive to overseas students.

I’d also be curious about this 9 hours a week of lectures. What are they doing the rest of the time? Our full time students probably have the equivalent of 2 3-hour sessions a day 4-5 days a week. Not all of these are ‘lectures’. Some of them are lab-based data analysis, or tutorials, or fieldwork, or later on students spend almost all their time doing research and writing up for their dissertations. It doesn’t mean they aren’t engaging in full time education (that requires significant staff time, small ratios, some of it 1-to-1), but they aren’t sitting in a lecture hall being talked at as a big group.

Awards ceremonies, Admissions and clearing staff, Student Support Services, marketing, transport, student records, student experience, facilities, cleaning, HR, IT services, groundworkers,

and https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/finances/expenditure

The courses that need labs cost far higher to run than say humanities that have fewer contact hours so these courses subsidise the more expensive to run courses.

increased pension contributions

although @Spirallingdownwards in 2023–24 the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has been revalued and contributions reduced for both members and employers. From the annual accounts perspective, this will have lowered staff costs (very often one of the most significant costs, if not the most significant cost, for most) in USS institutions.

I studied a course with around 10 contact hours a week pre tuition fees. There is no way I'd pay out full fees for it now.

Lecturers are paid plenty. Starting salary of £38k, people increment up to £56k without much effort (top end of Senior Lecturer scale). The next level (Reader/Associate Prof) takes you to about £65k. Profs get around £67-85k.

And the pensions are sky high. Universities in the Teachers Pension Scheme have to contribute 28% additional to salary for each academic.

If only. Automatic progession past lecturer grade is a thing of the past at many universities now, and it's based on "business needs" not merit in some cases. Reader doesn't exist everywhere; associate prof is senior lecturer scale for some. Profs are well paid as long as they keep meeting their targets.

It's a quite well paid job but not great for everyone compared with similarly skilled work in other sectors. Not the saltmines but your version is one of the better ones.

we have professors on well over £100k

VCs salaries and pensions. At my university no more contributions could be paid into the VC's pension pot because it was full. Can you imagine your pension pot being full up? No, me neither.

Agree. Salaries look decent on paper but workload is extremely high and staff are usually close to burnout.

That’s would happen fairly quickly. VCs are very well remunerated. Even roles such as provost are over £200k

What do you mean without much effort?

Academic staff are highly qualified and would have put in years of service to get to top band. I think you're being rude.

£38k isn't always starting salary, I've seen much lower. It's taken me over a decade and I'm not on 56k as a senior lecturer, with X3 degrees, years of industry experience, leadership roles and more.

The costs are as people have said ... Pensions, building maintenance, staffing for lecturers, IT, estates, marketing, professional services, student support, counselling etc etc. Heating and lighting. Equipment. Software. Library resources (journal subscriptions, online archives, books, e books etc), estate management...

It isn't school. Students are given lots of facilities to do independent study guided by subject experts. We are not full time teachers.

This. Universities have treated international students as a cash cow for years. Now fewer are coming but the system didn't plan for that. It always was a house of cards.