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?

Sorry, I bet it's been said, but I can't not:

I would assume £40k is starting academic salary surely.

Oh, it would be even funnier if it weren't so absurd.

Starting academic salary usually works out less than minimum wage for hours worked, because you start during your PhD and teach to make ends meet.

Starting full time job salaries can be 'stipendiary' and as low as 2-3k per year (on the expectation you teach to make the ends meet, or do something else part time on top).

Many prestigious starting salaries at Oxbridge are around 22-25k.

Oh, and while I know that academics' pay isn't the big cost of university, I did also think the OP's point about contact hours is an issue.

IME, what students interpret as 'contact hours' and what they are actually being offered, diverges quite a bit. Students tend to think 'contact hours' means time in lectures, seminars, and classes, but not open office hours and certainly not training seminars or optional lectures or anything like that.

Even when I was a PhD being paid hourly for my teaching, I still got paid for the open office hours (and I didn't get paid time for class prep or marking, so you can see it was viewed as a core expense). Very, very few students turned up, even ones who really could have used the time, and even those who complained they could have done with more 'contact time'.

It's partly a problem of communication - preparing students to understand what's on offer and how best to use it - but not only that.

I agree Jeanne. Before we went through the business of keeping registers and setting attendance requirements there was a real issue with students not turning up for seminars and lectures. We still offer lots of other things aside from the basic lecture/seminar/tutorial teaching and more often than not, the take-up is extremely poor. At the end of every term, the pigeon-holes will be overflowing with marked work that students have not bothered to collect.

You are only looking at jobs in IT. It is well known that it is far easier to find jobs in IT than in almost any other field. I am talking about students in general, not just in IT, and not just from top universities. Many are finding no work or very low paid work.
If you earn less than £21K (which has been frozen, despite the fact that salaries rise over time), for 30 years, you won't have to pay back your fees. That leaves plenty of people who are relatively low earners, who will have to pay back. It will be a huge problem for graduates who are not in the minority of high flyers.
NB law does not pay well outside of the big commercial firms, and is in free fall, with very high levels of unemployment and many on low salaries.
Ime salaries at universities cost around 50% of total costs. So it is a very substantial outlay.
Interesting the point that students are effectively having to pay the capital costs of the universities, eg new buildings and maintenance, with the government not contributing to that.
Those of you who work at universities - do you have any idea what your institutions are likely to charge if/when the fees cap is removed? Will STEM and humanities students be charged the same at that stage?

I use software developers because that is what I know. I worked as a postdoc in a computer science department, and now I work commercially. I'm not going to talk about something I don't know about.

I'm interested in why you think the fees cap will be totally removed? TEF will allow universities to increase fees in line with inflation. Anything more than that is blue sky thinking and won't happen in this Government.

Who knows how future governments will fund HE, or job seekers allowance, or state pensions, or their immigration or education policies or anything else for that matter. For what it's worth HE comes pretty low on government lists of legislative priorities.

Ime salaries at universities cost around 50% of total costs. So it is a very substantial outlay.

Yes, it is. But UK academics are already paid less than the international norm and academia is international, so we are already losing many top academics to foreign institutions. Cutting salaries further will simply push UK universities further down international rankings, make UK universities less attractive for international students, make UK universities attract less research funding from industry/international sources, make the universities have less economic impact and hurt the UK economy further.

Comparing academics with teachers and suggesting academics get teaching salaries is not sensible, when they do very different jobs. (Teaching fellows at lower ranked institutions already have salaries comparable with teachers but academics at high ranked institutions whose career is dependent on high level research should not be compared with teachers.)

BTW according to unistats the average starting salary for a maths graduate at a RG university is around £26-28k. The average salary within a couple of years of graduation rises to significantly over £30k. The starting salary for a postdoc in maths (with four years additional education) is £28k, i.e. the salary that they would have gotten after their first degree but far less than they would be on 4 years after graduation.

If you want to know what an undergraduate degree really costs, have a look at fees charged to non-domestic/EU students. I'd estimate the discipline I teach in (Humanities, but not just book-based) costs around £12,000 actually.

And our students (I'm at a top ten, RG etc etc blah blah blah) have access to every digital research resource known to the humanities scholar. These all costs in the realm of tens of thousands of pounds a year.

Re. contact time: students (and even more their parents) seem to think that university teaching is "explaining" and "telling me how to get a First." Really, it's not, as Disquisitiones says so eloquently upthread. I try to view it as facilitating students' learning, rather than teaching them. "Being taught" is too passive for what needs to happen at university.

Yes, there'll be stuff that students don't understand, and concepts or history or specialist terms to be explained. My lectures give them an overview, and try to offer them useful and well-known starting points. I try to survey the field of a topic, but it's them who must dive in and engage with the writing, the visuals, the practice, first-hand. In my field that includes a lot of independent learning: reading as an individual or in a small study group, and doing - practising skills, reseasching, writing, etc etc.

More contact time would inhibit that. And there's actually research to show that more hours in lectures or seminars doesn't necessarily mean the students learn more or better.

And as others have said, in the days before we were so hot on attendance, attendance was pretty patchy. TBH, at certain times of the term, it still is. I don't get it: student bitch about how much they pay, but they don't get the utmost value from it in this respect.

And anyway, students and parents are bitching at the wrong people. It's not the universities who imposed fees.

PS Everything disquisitiones says. We're professors in different fields, but the experience is pretty much the same.

And there's actually research to show that more hours in lectures or seminars doesn't necessarily mean the students learn more or better.

I am trying to get the BBC to make a documentary about this.

That would be fantastic. Could you also include the research which shows that laptops and other devices in the lecture/seminar room also hinder students' learning?

Oh, and the research which shows that student evaluations of teaching are more reliable statistical indicators of students' sexism than their tutors' efficacy as teachers?

Great Myths of HE : Busted by Disquisitiones I'd pay to watch it!

I saw a brilliant graphic of the words students use about male and female lecturers in evaluations recently: put the word 'bossy' in and the dots for women go way over to the right: change for 'funny' and it's a straightforward switch.

Apparently male & female tutors can hand work back to students at the same time. The male tutors will get high positive results for "promptness"; the female tutors will not.

I dunno, I'm kind of with OP.
I just checked the not-state-resident fees for my American university, they are now at $7000/yr, or about £4k. That is 4 yr course, true.

The same U-grad course at the UK Uni where I work now would set you back £16k/yr for international students. In fees alone. Okay so done in 3 yrs, but still, 4x more expensive in one year alone. Doesn't make sense. And the American course will be designed so that you can work during term time.

On the other hand Harvard is $40k per year, which makes Oxbridge look like an utter bargain. Comparing top tier US with top UK institutions gives a different answer from comparing second or third tier US with the UK. But indeed it is arguably unfair that (i) all UK fees are the same and (ii) undergraduates are effectively paying for research which should be paid for by UK taxpayers.

Yes, the goal of the documentary would be to bust myths of HE (and by so doing give useful information to parents with no background of university education). The BBC team was interested. But even if they want to proceed there is a question of whether universities/academics would actually trust them enough to agree ... poor editing (for maximum dramatic effect) could lead to a documentary which makes things worse, not better.

poor editing (for maximum dramatic effect) could lead to a documentary which makes things worse, not better

yes. And people already resent academics for (apparently) setting ourselves up as cleverer than everyone else. Although not when they want their lives saving, or the latest archaeological find interpreting, or ...

Here's the link to the graphic that Seek talks about

Gender Differences in Student Evaluations of Lecturers

But at least the undergraduates in your field are pretty gender balanced, Multishirking. (At least, I think so?)

Think how much worse it is to be one of the few women lecturing in a subject with 80% male undergraduates......!!!

"third tier" UK is probably still charging £9k/yr tuition.
My Alma Mater is R2, I think, so arguably second, not third tier.
the 'top tier' American college I attended charges $37k/yr to out of state (yowza). Feck lot easier to get into than Huhvud, though.

My DD got a place at a USA university and the fees per semester were $20,000. So that was $40,000 x 4 years! There are clearly big differences in USA universities!!!

I would also love to know what private senior school is £3,000 a term? We paid way more than that! University is very good value. However, students must be advised on the best courses and some courses are clearly not worth the money as employment and earning prospects are not good.

I think too many students believe it will be an extension of school: wall to wall teaching, hand holding and lecturers available at all hours. Self-conducted learning is very difficult for a geat many students so they think £9,000 is poor value. STEM subjects cost way more to teach. Look at the international fees. £20,000 pa would not be uncommon. Clearly some home students get brilliant value for money!

Unless I was very wealthy, I would not pay for private school, or not at full cost, because state school is available and is free. Sadly no longer the case for university in England. I've compared the cost of a private school with the cost of university. Good private schools where I live cost around £12K per year and, bearing in mind how small their pupil numbers are (well under 1000, as against maybe 20 000 at a university) their facilities are relatively speaking excellent (there are obviously great savings to be made when you are catering for huge numbers). I could of course compare the cost of state school to the government/taxpayer, which I think is around £4K per year per pupil.
There are 2 strands of academics (though perhaps not everywhere?). Those who specialise in research, and those who specialise in teaching. That is a fact - I know several of them, and we have discussed how the system works.
I don't agree that undergraduates gain hugely from being taught by world leaders. PHD students perhaps do. The quality of teaching is far more important to undergraduates than the quality of the research, and the two don't always go hand in hand.
I certainly wouldn't argue that junior academics are overpaid.
The academics on this thread all appear to be from top universities. I'd be interested to hear some responses from an academic from a university that is at, say, 120 in the UK league tables. How can they justify charging so much? And how much do their undergraduates go on to earn?

Have you read previous posts ?
Do you have DCs choosing a university or is this a theoretical arguement?

Those who specialise in research, and those who specialise in teaching. That is a fact

No it isn't. It's far more complex than that. I'm actually an academic, not just some random people you've talked to. I do know about these things.

You are trying to pin "blame" for "expensive" universities in the wrong place - the university. Universities are receiving less money now than before Government funding for UG teaching was removed. YOu should be aking these questions of your MP, particularly if they're a TOry.

I don't agree that undergraduates gain hugely from being taught by world leaders

Show me your evidence?