Some universities will go bust

[GinForBreakfast]

Reported in the Times today. It must be so worrying for students joining or returning in September/October.

My question is around the regulator, who knows where the issues are. What should they be telling students and when? It seems cruel, especially to young people, to withhold information. It has financial implications as well - people moving, paying deposits etc.

Instead, universities need to spend less on admin, vice chancellors etc. Research should be funded only by grants and private enterprise not student fees.

Tell me you know nothing about how a university works without telling me you know nothing about how a university works.

When a country like Germany pays for unis via its government, that’s via taxation It’s not getting money from the ether. Germany has different types of post school education. We used to: polys and unis. We have now rolled every post 18 college into one uni group. It was a huge mistake.

We also virtually scrapped the entire adult education provision, leaving much reduced options for post 21year olds to get more qualifications and retrain etc. In our smalltown, we had three AE colleges. One closed and the other two converted wholly to colleges of fe aimed at 16+. Another huge mistake.

This really interests me: you are regarding a degree like it's an even more advanced version of A-Levels whereas a university is regarding it as the stepping stone way-point before you attempt your PhD, which itself is a stepping stone way-point before becoming a postdoc researcher.
There have been a couple of similar posts, which seem to show a huge gulf between what society thinks the purpose of a degree is (and by extension the purpose of a university, as the two are synonymous for most people), and what academics think universities are for. If universities are just to create phd holders, then how have we got into the current situation? Surely this was known many years ago, way before Blair and way before polys, given they they too awarded degrees.

@YellowAsteroid
I am no expert in university funding. However, I have read articles about the UK being the third most expensive in the world. The USA is more expensive as it spends far more on sport and Luxembourg is the other outlier.
Other countries like Canada, Germany, Finland spend less per head.
Apparently, we have a 1:13 staff student ratio versus Canada's 1:23. At the same time, lectures in the UK have more students per staff member. Lecturers need to be doing less unfunded research and more teaching to make our system cheaper. I don't think most undergraduate students care whether their lecturers have done any research at all. They just want a degree to get a job. If you asked students what they would prefer-a cheaper degree at a teaching university a more expensive degree at university that carries out research where both institutions are equal in status, they would choose the cheaper degree mostly. However, I understand that the many high status institutions are also the ones that carry out more research.
I just think that students are caught in a trap now where they feel that in order to get a decent job, they have no choice but to get into debt. My friend's daughter has £80,000 of debt after changing her mind during her degree, doing a masters and then training as a teacher. She will be paying her debt off until she retires. In my opinion, this is terrible. We need to offer less expensive pathways post 18 into decent jobs.

Tbh both are true, and the public does know that at some level. We need academics and researchers to populate universities, to do fundamental research that increases our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. We also need nurses and teachers and engineers.

You can have two separate types of organisations that do two different jobs but for various reasons the drift has been towards a single type that delivers both in varying degrees (no pun intended).

I think if we just acknowledged that universities serve multiple purposes we could move on and have a more productive debate.

Your research sounds interesting & important. But you’re using it to state a fact and asserting authority without being able to show tangible proof. Which was something my own university & post grad education drilled into me NOT to do I believe you, but fee, I’ve known of at least one person on MN to lie about their expertise as an academic.

I guess it's up to you (and others) whether you believe I'm an academic or not and whether my research actually exists. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Without outing myself I can't provide you with proof!!

@Runemum do you think the ONLY purpose of university is to teach undergraduate students?

Your suggestions are assuming universities are like schools and should be run in similar ways. You don't seem to appreciate that they are completely different!

If you asked students what they would prefer-a cheaper degree at a teaching university a more expensive degree at university that carries out research where both institutions are equal in status, they would choose the cheaper degree mostly.

How would the universities have equal status if one does research and the other doesn’t? What would their status be based on?

The problem is that it would be very hard to unwind the current hierarchy of status among UK universities (which has historically been largely based on research) and place them all on an equal footing.

Research is also has universities are ranked world wide.
what these would you use to evaluate how goid a uni is? Student satisfaction? Employability? Time to find a job? Results at the end of the year?

Nurses, teachers and engineers are still taught at uni though….

Uni is doing both. Teaching students skills to use as professionals AND. skills to become researchers.
Many if those skills are actually similar (incl critical thinking, ability to analyse etc ) anyway
That’s also why people might study in one area but then start working in another (engineers working in banking is a classic one)

If you asked students what they would prefer-a cheaper degree at a teaching university a more expensive degree at university that carries out research where both institutions are equal in status, they would choose the cheaper degree mostly.

Have you asked students this though?
When fees were increased some universities chose not to charge the full amount thinking students would choose a 'better value' degree. It didn't work.
Cheaper degrees were viewed as poorer quality and students want high quality! What makes you think this would be different now?

Not to mention, universities that don't do research are unlikely to attract the best academics and would probably pay them less.
Some universities offer teaching only contracts for an academics but they're not particularly attractive to career academics as they limit your career progression.

This disconnecting of teaching and research is just nonsensical to anyone who works in the sector. Knowledge is not static. And those who work in developing knowledge are of course going to give the best teaching experience. Highest ranked for search will always attract best lecturers and students. Otherwise you are talking about training colleges, not universities.

And to the person who says duh Germany taxes...etc. that is precisely my point. Governments make choices about how well skilled and educated they want a workforce to be and whether that is paid for aas a social benefit. Ours have chosen to push that cost back onto individuals.

A 1:13 staff to student ratio? Really? I find that hard to believe but if it’s true I’m complaining to my boss tomorrow.

My course is 1:35 and that’s on a healthcare profession course which has 30 hrs of contact time a week inc skills sessions and is meant to have a better ratio than a history course for example.

An idea-
Non Russell Group universities could become teaching universities only. Russell group universities could continue with research. If research is only carried out at the certain universities then there will be more funding available. The best teaching only universities will be able to maintain high status still as academic students wanting better quality teaching and more hours per week will go there.
Not all research carried out at universities can be high quality. Research has ballooned as the number of universities has increased and it can't all be valuable.

So you think only RG universities do worthwhile research? And only students attending RG universities deserve to be taught by the best academics offering research informed teaching?

What if you're an academic teaching a subject not offered by a RG university? Are you unable to ever do research? Who progresses the knowledge in those subjects?

Yes, universities deliver multiple benefits, and should have multiple income streams. They rely too heavily on student fees right now.

I don't think undergraduate students care about whether their lecturers are doing research. You can teach based on other people's research. It doesn't have to be your own research and probably shouldn't be as then there would likely be a bias in the way the findings were presented.
How much research does there need to be? Before the massive expansion of universities, there was already a lot of research being conducted at the RG universities.
I don't think that teaching quality is related to research.
Undergraduate students should not being paying for academics to carry out research with debt that they can't pay off until they are retired.

We do have multiple income streams.
Student fees are just one. Those fees don't cover what they are intended to so universities have had to supplement them with other income sources but that's only sustainable for so long. Especially when some of those additional income streams are being reduced.

I don't think undergraduate students care about whether their lecturers are doing research.

But they do care about high quality teaching though.
High quality teaching should be research informed and delivered by people who are passionate about their subject.

You can teach based on other people's research.
We do but if you're planning on stopping research taking place at the majority of universities then where is this research coming from? You know that there are only 24 RG universities right?

It doesn't have to be your own research and probably shouldn't be as then there would likely be a bias in the way the findings were presented.

Clueless 🙄 not even going to dignify this with a response.

How much research does there need to be?
More than you probably realise. What research do you think needs to stop?

Before the massive expansion of universities, there was already a lot of research being conducted at the RG universities.

What about those subjects not offered at RG universities? Who does that research?

I don't think that teaching quality is related to research.

YOU think this?can you support this assertion in any way?

Undergraduate students should not being paying for academics to carry out research with debt that they can't pay off until they are retired.

They aren't paying for research. Their tuition fees don't cover the cost of their tuition, there isn't money left over being used for research willy nilly. Tuition fees do go towards to paying academic salaries and of course those academics do research but fee income isn't being used directly to fund research.

Also, you need to acknowledge that this funding model is not implemented by universities. We are at the mercy of government policy.

Of interest @EmpressoftheMundane what percentage of university income do you think comes from student fees? And within that undergrad and postgrad split, plus home and international within each. Then more pertinently what do you think it should be? Are you thinking more should be like Cambridge and Oxford where fee income is less than 20% of total income.

Following this with interest.
The post-16 HE underfunding is really biting hard. Employers are looking for experience as much, if not more so than an RG University qualification and the apprenticeship route is very popular as a result. I also think we should boost our colleges: vocational and technical degrees should not be considered the poor relation.

Finally, its worth pointing out, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, its now possible to get online lectures from anywhere in the world. Our universities are up against everyone else, including the big names, such as Harvard and Yale who have endowments and alumni funding. The universities are competing with one hand behind their back because they can't control fees, have little government income and fewer reserves to cushion them.

The thing is though@Runemum the Russell Group marketing entity didn’t exist when the significant university expansion to place. But for a quirk of fate Leicester Uni could have been a founding member. Much beloved on MN Durham, Exeter, and York didn’t even join it until 2012.

RG....best marketing exercise ever! Who is going to tell St Andrews, Bath etc they can't do any more research!!! And if you look at research rankings, you'll see RG don't even come in top overall necessarily, and in some subjects, not at all.