Should struggling universities be supported or allowed to fail?

[LCM001a]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3p93j3823o

25 universities are at risk of bankruptcy. What is the answer here? Should they be supported by the government to keep going? Should they be allowed to fail and the whole university sector be restructured?

I feel like we will end up with only mega universities offering popular courses, and the smaller universities with more niche subjects will disappear. This seems to go against everything that academia should be about, and feels like we will end up with just corporate academia left.

What is the purpose of universities? It looks more and more like it is to make money, not to create knowledgeable skilled students, and to extend our understanding of the world. How did we get here?

Part of the issue with things like this is that it is very, very difficult to find staff, especially for maths, science etc, even in schools, so any maths teachers will have to take a pay cut to work in FE, which they wont, and don't need to do. FE is so disgracefully underfunded. Successive governments have talked the talk about 'skills' and 'lifelong learning' but have not funded FE sufficiently. School sixth forms get a higher level of funding per student ( it used to be about 3x as much but I've been out of FE for a while so don't know if its any better now) Adult learning has just had its funding cut again by a massive 6%, meaning closed courses, reduced provision etc. Not a peep of protest, then people moan about why so many people go to University/why we have so many NEETS etc.

Except research is loss making….

Research is loss making. We need it, but because the public don’t know it’s happening it gets none of the interrogation the “waste of time Micky mouse” undergrad degrees do.

i think we all know for all the valuable research there is a large slice of vanity project- and I would suggest many profs are excessively paid, and to be honest I would suggest that teaching universities don’t need them, or at least, need them in far smaller numbers.

This board seems to have been inftrayed by non university workers. I dont appreciate your framing and few within the sectir would recognize your terminology and assumptions.

I do work in HE

Much of the most valuable research either occurs by accident, or can only be identified retrospectively.

I am in a maths intensive field with some knowledge of modern cryptosystems. In monetary terms, the most compelling example I know concerns an 18th c result called Euler’s Theorem. For 200 years it was of interest only to pure mathematicians and a few in related fields.

In 1978 the RSA cryptosystem (these are the initials of its inventors, although it turns out to have been invented earlier at GCHQ, and locked away) was published. This was the first widely used system for secure communication over open channels and it is still the most widely used computer encryption system in the world. (An https site is using encryption)

A key step of RSA encryption relies on the use of Euler’s Theorem. That abstract theorem from the 18thc has enabled the digital economy. (There are many other encryption systems now, using different bits of maths, but philosophically they are all variants of RSA. It isn’t clear how long it would have taken before someone else found the core idea.). This is estimated to be responsible for at least 15% of global GDP pa.

I reckon that covers a lot of false starts.

There are many versions of this type of thing, though this is the most economically compelling one I know.

Agreed, but as I understand it much of this is about admin design. Is that not correct?

Let them fail.
We have too many mediocre gravy train ‘academics’.
Would be far better to increase in training for practical skills than endless Mickey Mouse courses extracting fees from the gullible to provide sinecures for the gormless.

Look again at @LCM001a ’s list posted at 13.28 today showing the financial status of RG universities. Which of those in deficit would you call Mickey Mouse? What about Lancaster?

No. UKRI doesn’t fully fund central costs - you know, the central heating, cleaning your room, fixing that sticky window, someone to reset your MS account etc. Yes they’d still be funded whether you’d got an EPSRC grant or not, but effectively fee income ends up covering it all, even though you may spend all your time on a grant. Charity and Wellcome funds even less - I don’t think they even cover staff pension conts!

Generally you’re lucky if research grants support 75% of associated costs.

Thank you for this.

So at some level, this can be thought of as insufficient overhead - but it is about categories rather than percentages? Is thst valid?

Also, @MelanzaneParmigiana , I do not think that in practice anyone can demarcate categories of universities cleanly. Most unis, even elite ones, have some programmes that are weaker. Many, many unis have pockets of excellence that will be lost in the event of closure.

Do we know the surplus/deficit position for the non RG but highly regared eg Bath, St Andrew's, Lancaster, Lougborough, Reading?

Lancaster is in surplus but suffering badly from a drop in Overseas applications and recent enrolment. They are cutting £30M from payroll through Voluntary Severance and I am not sure if going further, if necessary, is being discussed.

The others are doing okay. Bath may be on the best trajectory and St A’s is running a successful capital campaign. Declining Overseas numbers are hitting most with these two as the exceptions.

PS though IIRC there may be belt tightening at Reading? Others may know more.

So what would happen to the former Poly's?

They also fill a huge need, my DD got her NHS related degree in one and is now working in the NHS... what should she do otherwise?

The Uni sector needs massive amounts of additional funding and a number of courses shelving/restricted but we cannot just let former Poly's go to the wall.

They either just about scrape a pass, cheat using AI or fail. There is no way you can legitimately do well on a course where you cannot speak the language. I'm not just talking broken English, I mean they literally cannot converse about the most basic of things and cannot understand instructions. It's wrong that we let them on the course and they fail and it's wrong that those that cheat get through.

I am sure there are plenty of people who work in HE and know very little about the sector or how other universities work- it’s easy to imagine someone in a role in a university not understanding the role low tariff unis play in the sector for example

I think it's true that international students are now going elsewhere. When I first starting working at my place the international students were mostly v academic and hard working. We still get some like this but we also get quite a lot who are not capable of passing and can't cope and fail or are resorting to using AI. Many home students are also doing same.

Reading is in deficit. I suspect they all are, but can’t be arsed to read alll of their published accounts lol

Yes, Reading is running an annual deficit but it is about half of what it was. They are erasing it on pace. I count that as a success in the current climate.

Bath has achieved its target surplus ahead if schedule.

thats great news. The university that I worked on turnaround for has returned to profit but it’s very fragile and I’d be surprised if they last 10 years.

My colleague has turned around the same (different) uni twice 😭

Ha ha abolish universities and reinvent them as polys - those post 92s that get a constant bashing. Make it make sense!

I don't believe research is loss making, if it has overheads. I know it pays 80% FEC (I have many grants) but the costs are inflated by universities to cover 100% of real costs, imo. eg we have to pay 'rent' for use of a lab bench, costed in to each grant; we have to pay for liquid nitrogen storage that I don't use; the microscope is costed at £100 an hour which is vastly in excess of what it actually costs.

If research was truly loss making, they would sack us with UKRI grants first, and they never do