Why is university so expensive?

[Zazedonia]

Can anyone explain why university costs so much (and will cost more when the fees cap is removed or loosened)? Many students have very little contact time, and much of it is in big lecture halls. Why does university cost a similar amount to private school, which provides so much more?

[Zazedonia]

I don't pretend to be an expert, just throwing the topic out there for debate. Don't see how it's relevant, but I went to Oxbridge. Which will be extremely expensive if the cap is removed. Not everyone who went to Oxbridge earns a lot of money, and would find that level of debt easy.

[BoboChic]

It's very important to work out what graduates have done post-degree when selecting a course. This is not easy and takes time.

[EricNorthmanSucks]

Indeed disquit.

Some courses are a snip at 27k and some are cash cows.

It's quite hard for prospective students ( and their parents ) to work out which are which- though there is an element of subjectivity I concede.

[disquisitiones]

But it is not a two tier system from the perspective of fees: most courses are charging £9k or near to £9k.

[EricNorthmanSucks]

I think that essentially there is a two tier system in the UK.

A core of universities offering a rigorous academic education and a larger group offering vocational training.

The problem stems from the former trying to offer vocational courses alongside (often a cash cow the at they don't do well) and the later trying to position their vocational courses ( which they do do well ) as having academic equivalence.

[sablepoot]

One of my dc attends a 'lower ranking HE establishment', quite possibly ranked around 120 in country (I've not checked this). The fees are a bit lower than £9k pa, and from what I've been told the calibre of the lecturers/tutors is rather hit and miss too.

[disquisitiones]

There are 13 research intensive universities in Holland and around 15 "polytechnic" type institutions. The population of Holland is around one quarter of that of the UK, but we have significantly larger numbers of international students than they do. Overall their numbers of HE institutions don't seem very different to ours.

(That said, I do think there could be a few sensible mergers of UK institutions... in part that is what the new fee regime and lack of student caps is meant to encourage.)

[lljkk]

OP wants a two tier university system in which the upper tier provides university degrees comparable with those from the rest of the world and the lower tier cheaper option effectively offers a couple of extra years of school education.

This is EXACTLY what the RG advocated back in '97. They didn't get it, so they set about branding themselves to try to achieve the same aims.

Is anyone else surprised to find out there are as many as 120 HE institutions in UK...

[MultishirkingAgain]

I also don't really believe

What you believe or not is actually irrelevant. You have got some very inaccurate "beliefs" about universities and what they're for, what they do, how they're run, and how they're funded.

Where did you go to university?

[titchy]

I want to know why OP thinks research makes a profit! Not that OP actually answers any questions or acknowledges the points put forward by those that actually know.

[Needmoresleep]

I am not sure I understand any of this.

By chance I know people who work part time at Bournemouth University/AUB. People who have had established and sucessful careers and who are now mixing some teaching with freelance work/self employment. Great people to me taught by if your interest is in a digital arts/media/marketing sort of area. Ditto if my DC were heading for BBC type grades I would prefer them to want to take a finance degree at Bournemouth with the scope for a year working in a back-room function within one of Bournemouth/Poole's many banks than perhaps a less vocational degree elsewhere. Any many people go because it is their local University and do not see the need to invest in three years living away from home. I assume there are plenty of Universities with a similar offer. And I know it is not unusual, say in finance, to find people who have worked their way up from a local backroom operation to a transfer to a more senior job in the City.

The big and contentious question then is whether, as some seem to suggest, fees should be cheaper because Bournemouth is a less prestigeous University, with the corollery that staff should be less well paid because the don't undertake "research".

Ultimately I assume staff pay is a function of supply and demand, within the straitjacket of University funding. So Oxbridge may have vacant professorships because they can't afford the salaries internationally reknown Professors can command. However in some subjects there may be a ready supply of post-docs willing to work freelance for relatively low pay.

Whereas it might be worth Bournemouth's time, like the football team, to invest in key staff so they can make their way up the divisions.

[disquisitiones]

In practice, academics in those institutions will be paid less and will be more teaching focused. Those institutions rely more on student fees and less on research income.

Actually people of the same quality can get paid more in lower ranked institutions. Also the pension arrangements for post 92 universities are now considerably better than those in other universities.

And all institutions are heavily reliant on student fees. The main difference is that top institutions have more research grants and hence more research staff on temporary contracts who don't teach at all.

However you try to re-label people as research/teaching, or teaching-focussed, this doesn't change the reality of the costs of university facilities unless you ask academics to take a significant pay cut. (And pay cuts are not realistic when most of us have seen very low pay increases since 2008, incomes falling in real terms, many lack job security, we have had drastic reductions in our pensions, drastic increases in workload as admin staff are cut and student numbers are increased.)

[lionheart]

You will find that a teacher track academic will often do research which has some pedagogic aspect to it rather than research of a lesser quality.

[mummytime]

Do you realise that Graduates from undergraduate Librarianship degrees do not normally/mainly work at local libraries? When a friend of mine graduated she and her colleagues mainly went to work for private companies or places like MI6, and often worked in more general "information" areas including moving into University administration. And they got pretty good wages on the whole. (Oh and this was a Poly/ex-Poly).

All Academics have to do research, it is a major part of what a University is, we do not have any purely teaching institutions in the UK. This is important as in all areas, what is taught at this level is changing all the time.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

Erm, that's what's being done everywhere.

How does it solve the problem?

[Zazedonia]

You can have 2 different job roles for academics:

1. those who do a lot of research, are expected to publish in good publications, etc, and do some teaching.
   
2. those who do a lot of teaching, but are expected to do some research, without as much pressure to publish in prestigious publications.
   
   This means that academics can play to their strength. You can pay the same to both if you wish, or may find that you can pay less to those in job role 2. Those who don't produce the right quantity or quality of research in job role 1 can move to job role 2 if there is space and their teaching is of sufficient quality.
   
   This is already being done, though perhaps not in your universities.
   
   I also don't really believe that posters on here think that being taught by top academics is either feasible (they don't have many top academics) or necessary on many courses in the less academic universities. In practice, academics in those institutions will be paid less and will be more teaching focused. Those institutions rely more on student fees and less on research income.

[disquisitiones]

And why not have those who do some research but are not top researchers and do a lot of teaching, and those who do a lot of research and are top researchers and only teach where that will make a real difference to the students, the latter being paid more?

How would this actually save any money?

Currently many academics are paid relatively low salaries (£30-£40k) and expected to produce top research as well as do a lot of teaching. A relatively small fraction of academics are professors on higher salaries; they are all expected to do a lot of research, a lot of teaching and a lot of management/administration.

Historically most UK academics did not progress beyond the (low) ranks of lecturer/senior lecturer before they retired but this was unsustainable: one cannot block career progression, or there is absolutely no motivation for strong performance.

How would you hire top researchers for a department in which the vast majority of people are not research active: why would they want to go there rather than going to top US or European institutions? how would they create a research group around themselves if all their colleagues were only teaching in a high school manner?

(And just to say yet again good teaching is strongly correlated with research. Do you really want prospective doctors to be taught by people who haven't been keeping up with the current medical research? How are you going to produce the next generation of world leaders in research if students are taught by teachers instead of researchers?)

[Zazedonia]

Just looking at the first entry on the librarianship course list, Aber runs a distance learning BSc. Probably not a lot of 1 to 1 with top academics on that course.

[Zazedonia]

I think that I would like to see a return of polys as polys, yes.
And yes I would like my DCs to go to a decent uni if possible, as they are both academic, and I do think that both unis and polys should be financially supported by the government. Which would mean that those who are earning £150K per year contribute more to their upkeep than those who are earning £40K per year.
Apologies if am I wrong about librarianship - based on a friend who studied it at a former poly, a very unacademic young woman who sailed through the course on almost no work.
And why not have those who do some research but are not top researchers and do a lot of teaching, and those who do a lot of research and are top researchers and only teach where that will make a real difference to the students, the latter being paid more? It does happen already, but it seems only at some universities (or maybe just at the one that I know).

[fidel1ne]

Interesting Lily. Only UG In WAles, Scotland or Germany.

I admit to being vague on the subject but I know someone who spent three years trying to get a place on the competitive UCL MA, so presumably quite arduous and academic?

[Lilymaid]

You are seriously saying that a student taking librarianship at one of the former poly's needs 1 to 1s with a top research academic?
Current list of UG and PG courses in "Librarianship"
Not many "poly's" (sic) and mainly postgraduate courses (I felt I must defend my profession!)

[fidel1ne]

Zaz would you like it if polytechnics came back?

[MultishirkingAgain]

Paid for by the citizens of that EU country via their taxes.

[disquisitiones]

But Jeanne OP does not acknowledge that universities have another raison d'etre, beyond teaching, so probably doesn't care if Oxford has world leading academics in research.

(And as Multishirking always says research and teaching actually go hand in hand, so I don't believe for a moment that students would get the same education without having exposure to world leading academics. Actually the fact that world leading academics have to teach, instead of buying themselves out of all teaching, is a big strength of UK universities over many international universities.)

And while complaining that UK universities at the lower end are over-charging she intends to send her children to universities in Europe, which receive far more than £9k per student.

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I suspect that the average student doing an undergraduate maths degree at Oxford would learn just as well if taught by bright but not world leading junior academics.

Might be true. But, um, how would this work long term?

Your bright but not world-leading junior academics at Oxford include the people who need to go on to be bright, world-leading academics, surely? The people who are doing amazing, ground-breaking research all started somewhere. If you use the junior academics to teach absolutely everything, they will not have time to do any research, and within a fairly short time, you will end up with a dearth of up-and-coming academics to do the groundbreaking stuff, won't you?

(Bitter, me? Nah.)