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Why is university so expensive?

115 replies

Zazedonia · 15/01/2016 12:59

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?

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JeanneDeMontbaston · 19/01/2016 13:58

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

How does it solve the problem?

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mummytime · 19/01/2016 13:58

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.

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lionheart · 19/01/2016 15:05

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.

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disquisitiones · 19/01/2016 16:01

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.)

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Needmoresleep · 19/01/2016 16:04

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.

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titchy · 19/01/2016 16:17

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.

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MultishirkingAgain · 19/01/2016 18:46

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?

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lljkk · 19/01/2016 19:46

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...

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disquisitiones · 19/01/2016 20:03

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.)

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sablepoot · 19/01/2016 23:14

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.

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EricNorthmanSucks · 20/01/2016 09:21

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.

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disquisitiones · 20/01/2016 09:56

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

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EricNorthmanSucks · 20/01/2016 11:08

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.

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BoboChic · 20/01/2016 12:47

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

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Zazedonia · 20/01/2016 15:33

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.

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