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Higher education

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Original poster

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

77 replies

mids2019 · 28/04/2024 07:56

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?

OP posts:
CormorantStrikesBack · 29/04/2024 11:20

The UCU are saying that 50 universities currently facing redundancies and the ones which aren't at the moment will be facing this soon.

poetryandwine · 29/04/2024 14:18

JocelynBurnell · 29/04/2024 08:36

Increasing UK productivity – and hence living standards – should be central to government policy.

Capital investment plays an important role in productivity growth, but the UK has less physical capital per worker than the United States and considerably less than France and Germany. The persistent productivity gap whereby the UK lags well behind other western economies is usually ‘explained’ by the fact that other economies have more capital invested per worker and their workers are more skilled.

An important driver of relatively slow UK productivity growth is relatively low levels of investment in research and development. Removing large swathes of the university sector is likely to reduce productivity - and living standards - rather than increase it.

I agree with you that our productivity is a major concern and that a lack of investment in R&D is a big part of this. However a high proportion of graduates compared to France and Germany go into the service sector. It is not clear to me how this affects productivity. My guess is that it is a problem.

It is also an interesting question how much improved vocational training and increased prestige for the vocationally trained would affect university enrolment. In Germany about 80% of pupils progress to HE with most of the rest doing vocational training. So it is possible to make vocational careers more socially attractive without shrinking HE.

I would like society to realise that the border between academic and vocational training is permeable. Where, really, do Medicine and Engineering (two fields for which I have the highest respect) fall? I really believe that losing the associations between certain types of training and certain social classes would help greatly.

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