Should the current financial plight of some universities make potential students and parents wary?

[mids2019]

More universities are in financial difficulty partially be wise of anticipated falls in foreign student numbers. There are consequent reduction in staff numbers.

Should students worry about course quality due to cut backs or does the decline of struggling universities become a self fulfilling prophecy due to reduced student intake as they more wary of enrolling?

Cormorant & Caffeine your experiences sound terrible.
Do you think many academic staff will seek jobs outside academia?

It's supply and demand. There are too many poor universities now, with too many kids doing unnecessary degrees.
As in any other walk of life, the best well survive.

Sadly I agree with PPs who are answering your question with a resounding ‘yes’, OP. It is as bad as everyone is saying.

If I had a child applying to university now I would be investigating the financials of their choices as one PP suggested. I would also be urging them to join the online forum The Student Room to ask students already in the degree programmes they’ve applied to for signs of financial difficulties, contraction, etc.

There are a couple of Universities that should have been shut down years ago. I worked in HE for about 27 years and like other colleagues retired early. During Covid redundancies were offered at almost all institutions and three colleagues or ex colleagues who were just past 55 and could claim their pensions took it. I knew others that were just a bit too young and others that couldn’t afford to who would have if they could have.

@Caffeineneedednow The two Universities that my friends took redundancy from during covid are both RG Universities.

@CormorantStrikesBack which unis are safer bets than others in your view? I'd appreciate the advice as I'd struggle to understand that even if I did look at their accounts!

I agree that inspection of annual accounts is unlikely to reveal future outcomes. If I had DC considering uni, I might try to mitigate by:

Managing their expectations that a lot of study might need to be self-directed and that they will need to be particularly proactive in seeking help if they are struggling with certain topics. If I judged they were not yet sufficiently mature to do that, I would encourage them to defer.

Steer them towards mainstream degrees build around core modules. 'Variant' degrees (ie those with a strong skew to a sub-discipline) and courses with a multiplicity of options are, I think, most at risk of being radically altered 'mid experience' if specialist staff leave or are made redundant.

Consider whether courses at research intensive departments are a safer bet as other income streams and other reasons for staff to be retained exist. You might still see a degradation of support and delivery but at least the course keeps running. Competition will only intensify for such courses.

Whilst it might or might not be sensible for the HE sector to shift and repurpose, it is all going to be very disorderly and students and employees are going to be caught up in that; that is the aspect that is so unfair and frustrating.

And that is the problem with neolibralism. The market should not decide education or health care. Yet here we are ..

Another pressure imo is the fact that many many FE colleges also offer degrees now. So lots of former polys are now competing with what used to be their feeder colleges. It's madness.

My own course has been growing well until this year and then several regional providers have expanded provision and there are not the numbers to support it. It's very frustrating.

Again, it's let the market decide but it's rough when I've worked my ass off to make my course a success and there's nothing else I can do because our VC will not entertain modern marketing machines that every competitor seems to employ.

This is interesting because if you look at the further/higher education sector world wide there has been a pull towards university status. Not away from them. Successful technical colleges grow and end up with university status.

We don’t necessarily need less universities but we could change what happens in them. Many universities are very successfully diversifying into online programs, flexible programs, professional education and degree apprenticeships.

I’m also loathe to compare across universities. Oxford may be “better” than Bolton, but if you want universities to contribute to social mobility, and to train public sector workers, then you absolutely need both.

China - sentiment isn’t great for Chinese applicants to the UK right now but I don’t think this will drop as much as others
India - visa requirements for post study employment are higher and restrictions on accompanying family will not be helping
Nigeria’s currency has devalued significantly and studying abroad is now out of reach for many
Hong Kong - has this peaked now because of the rush to get currency out of the jurisdiction before China tightens its grip even further? I’m not sure.

There’s no single reason but the global economy and the clampdown on visas will be factors.

Two small universities in London (St George's University of London and City University) are merging this August. There are at least twenty other pairs of universities at some stage in discussions about merger, although some of these might be very preliminary. Many of us are in institutions that have undergone substantial reorganisations in the past 3-4 years. Most of these reorganisations will not have produced major savings in themselves, but they will have established structures that the universities believe will allow them to more smoothly either merge administrative functions with another institution or contract them out to service companies that cover multiple institutions. This includes timetabling, discipline, academic support/reasonable adjustments, pastoral support, etc.

There are undoubtedly universities that are in a very precarious financial situation: some of them are very large and members of the marketing alliance that Mumsnetters believe confers magical powers (the Russell Group). Many will have to close courses, which will lead to students' having shrinking numbers of staff to teach/support them in their later years. I don't know whether/when a university will actually close outright but I don't think it will be long before one is effectively taken over by another institution, which will then "rationalise" provision by moving students between the two places so they're not delivering the same course on two sites.

People who talk about turning some universities into institutions that exclusively deliver apprenticeships are missing the basic point that apprenticeships are funded by employers rather than by students with state loans. There would need to be an increase in the apprenticeship levy and severe restrictions on the current abuse of the apprenticeship system by employers who effectively get their money back to train their own existing staff. Businesses will strongly resist any attempts to force them into funding genuine apprenticeships - or, indeed, offering posts to apprentices - and they have much more expensive lawyers than the average student can afford.

All universities publish annual financial statements inc student numbers.

And I do agree that while financial statements are no guarantee I think it’s the only indicator anyone has. If one place has 30 million in the bank and their finances and student numbers are steady or increasing I’d say that would be more positive than somewhere else which seems on a downward trajectory. But I am no expert in university finances or future planning. You just have to hope that a decent VC will be future proofing.

My main point I’m badly making is don’t let redundancies scare you off. Everyone will be making them if not now then soon. There’s no choice when income is dropping out of their control. You could argue be more worried about somewhere not making redundancies 🤷🏻‍♀️. Are they more likely to implode with a bang in a year.

it might be rocky for a few years. Some unis will merge, some courses will go. Someone on here talked about her dd at Kent and the course has been stopped after a year. So it’s happening. I would like to think the government would step in before any one place actually goes bust but who knows. But you can’t have such wide scale redundancies without courses being affected sadly.

My dd has had no markings since January. Two short and two long essays, four quizzes and one or two other small things.

Without the feedback it is hard to improve I think?

I think people mean old fashioned apprenticeships like trades which were structured differently to the modern apprenticeship programmes which is funded centrally as you say. We badly need builders, plumbers, electricians, nursery carers etc. and if we could train these professionals at no cost to their early stage employers, the country would benefit immensely. @NoNotHimTheOtherOne

The advice to manage expectations is sadly on target.

I agree with the philosophy behind the further advice, but parse the dichotomy somewhat differently. The universities who are letting people go are protecting programmes and staff who bring in the dosh.

Mainstream degrees such as History (consider the recent thread about Lincoln) and MFL are highly vulnerable, because they do not. One of the most historically esteemed of all core programmes, Pure Maths, now exists at only 20-25% of UK universities. Oxford Brookes is in the process of closing its programme now. Pure Maths programmes are being replaced by Data Science, Financial specialisms, etc. This in spite of good student numbers and decent grant income.

The real dosh is to be found in Business-related, Financial-related, STEM and Medicine. (You can see that Economics, a super competitive field, hits two categories). Data Science and AI are huge. All of this is worthy but IMO it does not a university make. Admin sees things differently

O2HaveALittleHouse Thank you for answering my question.

They're really not! They've culled massive amounts in recent years.

This is the list of universities with active redundancy programmes, plus those who had redundancy programmes in the last year or so - more than half the sector now.

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/#:~:text=The%20University%20of%20Central%20Lancashire,opened%20a%20Voluntary%20Severance%20Scheme.

Thank you @poetryandwine for that insight. Understanding the underlying drivers makes it easier for prospective students and their parents to understand the risks and general direction of travel. As you say, there are wider issues. The applied branches feed off the theoretical ones over the longer term, so there needs to be a balance or we all lose in the end.

In respect of apprenticeships, tweaks to the levy regime could shift the focus to younger employees. However, in my experience, even L3 and L4 apprenticeships have become prone to 'academisation' with the injection of underwhelming college coursework and end-point essays by apprenticeship providers which drag out the study period and make a charge to the Levy pot that does not represent good value for money; so reform and change is needed here too.

Regarding apprenticeships - worth noting that many degree apprenticeships have a fee cap which is much lower than the standard UG fee of £9250, plus 20% per year is held back till the apprentice completes at the end. They will not provide any solutions to the university funding crisis without significant restructuring of the levy.

Somewhat disappointingly it's difficult to see either the current or a Labour government having the appetite for the wide scale reform that the sector so desperately needs.

And yes @poetryandwine's alternative view that those making cuts now are the sensible ones that will be saved is a useful one to bear in mind.

People who talk about turning some universities into institutions that exclusively deliver apprenticeships are missing the basic point that apprenticeships are funded by employers rather than by students with state loans. There would need to be an increase in the apprenticeship levy and severe restrictions on the current abuse of the apprenticeship system by employers who effectively get their money back to train their own existing staff.

Every single apprenticeship is training existing staff. Some are hired directly into an apprenticeship programme, some gain an apprenticeship once they've been working for an employer for a while as career development. It's not abusing the system! For example, many NHS staff have gained higher skills and improved the care they give (and furthered their careers) through apprenticeships. It works brilliantly for "non-traditional learners", especially women with caring responsibilities and social mobility.

Many, many organisations are not using their full levy so, done right, increasing the number of apprenticeships should not need an increase to the levy itself.

But the associated costs are also smaller. These are part-time, often distance learning students. The financial surpluses on degree apprenticeship courses can be higher than standard UG degrees, especially since the reduction in international student numbers.

Edited for typo.

Our apprentice students do exactly the same modules, with the same assessments as our regular students. Why wouldn't they - so the cost is the same.

And distance learning is NOT cheap to deliver. Possibly more expensive than in-person.

Oh I have no delusions that the current goverment or the likely incoming labour goverment will do anything untill the unis start actually collapsing. Uni fees are a political hot potatoes that no one will touch.