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.

I think the main difference is that advertising and banking produce enough money directly that they can "waste" huge amounts without impact. When an enterprise wastes money but doesn't actually generate profit (see universities, NHS, local authorities) that's where the problems arise as taxpayers are directly funding that wastage.

I have been saying this for 20 years.

Blair started this shit storm but the Tories should have done something about it, but, as with everything else, they did nothing.

Hopefully there will be mergers and the bad unis will go bust.

Have to agree this is partly a consequence of too many university places and almost replacing the 11 plus divide of the 50s and 60s with one at 18.

Though a controlled managed reduction not sudden bankruptcy is the way to achieve it.

As someone with many years experience of the wider sector this is absolutely the issue. The unis fought for the 9k fees and then proceeded to get very giddy from the huge amount of money coming in, and they all embarked on huge programmes of capital expenditure which were completely unecessary but were done because one aspect that plays into university ranking tables is your level of capital expenditure.
Many campuses were half rebuilt with new sports complexes, fancy halls of residence with double beds and ensuites, and on campus starbucks outlets.
Then fee levels got frozen and loads of them are still servicing the costs of all the refurbishment. Its infuriating because there was a lot of money essentially wasted and young people saddled with debt.

Perhaps that was the case when you worked in the sector.

In 2022, over 134,000 visas were issued to student dependents, an all-time high, and eight times more than the roughly 16,000 issued in 2019. For context, student migration to the UK reached an all-time high in 2022, as more than 484,000 visas were issued. So either over a quarter of students bring one dependent, or your 2 are bringing hundreds...

Just to correct a couple of assertions made.

Polys were not "forced" to become universities.

Universities can and do teach technical and vocational skills and qualifications.

The tories were explicit in their ambition to create a competitive martial for HE. In those conditions it's entirely logical that universities would compete for students with the shiniest buildings, kit etc. Ditto international student recruitment - entirely logical.

Firms going bust is also an entirely logical consequence of a market system but as many have pointed out, universities provide a public good as well as a private/individual one.

There is a disconnect between people saying "let them close" and "people should go to their local university" when the former means it's likely there won't be a local university in the less affluent towns and cities.

Good. I think there are far too many universities and the quality of education is suffering. Too many training courses have been turned into degrees completely needlessly. It's an absolute racket. Young people are being charged a fortune to learn the skills they used to learn on the job, while being paid a small salary as a trainee or apprentice. Universities seem to be run as businesses these days rather than as educational establishments and far too many exist purely as a means to keep academics in cushy jobs. The whole 'industry' of education has become over-bloated and devalued.

I think certain establishments should be earmarked for closure, so they either take no more students after the current cohort has finished, and then close, or they should start a gradual merging process with another uni so the two establishments can be consolidated and streamlined.

That is due to the 2020 changes to student visa rules the government introduced so that universities didn't go bust.
Oddly the same government then reversed those changes in January this year and here we are.

It isn't as simple as that.

At the point at which a university is likely to fail the government is likely to step in and facilitate a merger in order to prevent chaos.

But this is no longer a centrally controlled industry in the way people seem to think it is.

@foxglovetree i have three that went through various university situations. The family experience was an eye opener over the course of 8yrs the three had very different personal experiences and outcomes.
I also taught casually at a local college.

Unless 50% of jobs "need" a degree, then it's stupid to aim for 50% of school leavers to go to Uni!

Of course, to make the numbers work, lots of jobs suddenly turned into "degree required" jobs for no good reason, other than to justify the 50% figure.

We need to scale it right back. Re-evaluate which jobs/vocations/professions actually NEED to degree level applicants, and change the entry requirements/training back a couple of decades to make them direct entry from school, college etc again.

If that means fewer people go to Uni, then Unis will need to offer more courses that aren't degree courses, i.e. adult education, shorter vocational courses, and work more to offer courses leading to professional qualifications rather than the end result being degrees.

Top notch universities will still attract top notch foreign students. Going to Canada or the US is way more expensive, for a start. But as you say, we've a allowed a situation where too many universities exist almost exclusively as a means to an end for second rate foreign students to get a foothold into the UK and to be able to work, bring dependents and ultimately, probably stay for good, even if they don't have any great skills to offer once their degree is complete. It can't continue.

Agree @taxguru

That sounds emininently sensible.

This is bad. Not that any of us are really surprised though are we?

Edinuburgh University were complaining this year about the drop in overseas applicants and blaming visas. They completely ignored the fact that their own lecturer strikes meant many students who paid a fortune to get a degree from there left without one. Why would people travel to Edinburgh, pay tens of thousands of pounds and years of their life if the university is going to turn round and say ‘sorry we can’t mark your degree, but thanks for the cash’.

Back in the 80s, I went to a Poly 25 miles away on either evening or day release to study for my accountancy exams.

20 years later when my firm took on a trainee, there was nothing like that. The Poly had been converted to a Uni and only did degrees, although most of the teaching staff were the same. (I actually took on one of my lecturers from 20 years prior as a part time accountant in my firm and he was still doing part time lecturing, but now for the accounting degree rather than the professional body qualifications.)

It was a massive pain trying to find somewhere for our trainee to go for lessons etc. Ended up the nearest place was a college some 90 miles away which wasn't ideal when it was all for evening classes and she had to drive back taking two hours after the lessons finished at 9pm!

Other trainees ended up going to the local FE college on day release to do the lesser AAT qualification instead of ACA/ACCA due to the travel involved. Such a shame that their prospects were dampened because of lack of anything local. More annoyingly is that we had a top Uni right on our doorstep, but they didn't do anything other than degree courses.

I don’t understand the problem.

A small number of unis close, others will likely take any displaced students.

Followers of the NSS will be well aware that Edinburgh's position in the bottom 5 this year is not atypical of its usual rating.

far too many exist purely as a means to keep academics in cushy jobs.

Most academics are in anything but cushy jobs. One thing that is completely missed here is research. In most ‘older’ universities academics are researchers first and lecturers second. They are expected to bring in grants and generate dozens of high quality papers alongside teaching. Their jobs are often dependent on this so are insecure and poorly paid compared to other sectors (such as school teaching).

Though the paper/conference presentation thing brings its own issues it the university ever wanted to patent/generate income from a research discovery…

For the students, it means a huge amount of disruption. Especially for courses that have professional training and placements embedded, like teaching and medical courses.

That's why I started the thread really, not to debate the whole HE system but to think about what this means for individual students, new and continuing.

If you have ever been involved in a HE provider closing down you'll know just how complex it is.

You don't know diddly squat about Unis or the sector. Trades and skills are training - fine. But society also needs Uni education.

Yeah that comment pissed me off. I've worked as an academic and in Professional services at Unis here and abroad - ridiculous comments being spouted here.

But not anywhere near as much university education as now.

No, it doesn’t. It didn’t before and it won’t in the future.

Many university wage-dependents do nothing for anyone. In fact they perpetuate the illusion that going to ‘uni’ and getting a degree is a worthwhile thing to do,

It’s not.