Some universities will go bust thread 2

[GinForBreakfast]

Continuing as thread 1 has filled up.

@MBL
Yes, I had labs supervised by postgrads in groups of around 40.

@LadeOde foreign students didn’t get us into this problem no, but the fee income from the influx of international students stopped universities addressing the underlying structural problems. When 30-60% of your income comes from a source you have little control over, and the rest of your business is loss-making, you do not have a resilient business model. The solution is not therefore, in my view, to encourage more universities to go down this route.

@FoxedByACatOur nearest is Bucks new. Or whatever they are called these days. Next nearest - Oxford. Which should my DCs choose? Top or bottom of league tables? No public transport to either.

I did a little digging on the University of Florida. Not Ivy League/Oxbridge, but a solid public university. So let’s say Russel Group. For instate students it looks like this:
-tuition $6,380 / £4,800
-per student state subsidy $13,400 / £10,000

Florida has no state income tax. Funds are raised through sales of 6%, similar to VAT.

So a total per student contribution of £14,800 per student. In the UK we are £9,535 + how much subsidy?

This of course, is a rough cut. But I feel I am missing something crucial here because the facilities at the University of Florida are mind blowing compared to a UK red brick uni.

Quite, my Dd would only have had one choice really.

Florida isn't even Russell Group equivalent. That's the University of California colleges, like Berkeley. Miles ahead.

I teach in a RG University, in a department usually ranked top 5-10. We have dumbed down everything so much in response to workload and cost pressures, and student surveys, that it's actually embarrassing.

I still think we deliver an excellent education overall but then why is our tuition the same as the lowest ranked departments?

The current setup in the UK is the worst of both worlds, expensive enough that it's turned students into consumers but not expensive enough to cover costs.

The government subsidy per student in the UK is around £1100.

Just looked at Uni of Virginia. In state fees $23,000. William and Mary $26,000. Uni of Virginia out of state is $60,000. Florida is very cheap - subsidies presumably. Faculties don’t always mean first class academics.

US universities tend to have very substantial endowments - often in the billions compared to low millions for UK universities.

For example: Florida has a $2.3 billion endowment

You could compare, for example, Warwick (an institution that ranks higher in the international league tables) which has a £7.3 million endowment.

Facilities not faculties.

Gov subsidy is not £1100 per student, it’s £10k for those on clinical placements (dentists and medics in their clinicla years), less than £1000 for STEM, zero for everything else.

Not even a London weighting anymore.

The whole of the loan scheme is a subsidy.

But only to the amount that was previously used to fund HE. No more.

Thanks for that correction.

So, £10,500 for STEM subjects, £9,500 for other subjects, compared with Florida's £14,800 (and they also have that massive endowment to support teaching with).

@TizerorFizzI think that’s really unfair. The HE sector has been warning govt for years that the situation is unsustainable. Of course universities aren’t perfect but they did not create the current problems.

I liken it to the situation in early years care. Parents have been promised “free” nursery/pre-school places, the government hasn’t given nurseries enough money, so nurseries are closing, restricting numbers or charging others more.

Universities are working in a far more complex environment than nurseries of course. As I’ve said repeatedly, this is an incredibly complex issue that will not be solved by universities just spending a bit less on biscuits.

Oh, and international students - universities can have the best reputation in the world but international student recruitment has been decimated by the previous government’s hostility, visa costs and changes, increased competition from Australia, Canada etc., currency crises in other countries, cost of living crisis in ours - all outside of universities’ control. Trump is doing a good job of deterring foreign students from going to America so we might get a bit of help from that.

@GinForBreakfast Over supply of university places and universities. Fees funded expansion. Post 2014 the universities became too big and could not meet obligations to students. Of course it’s complex and governments never see the bigger picture. They are just there for the short term. However economies need to be made and lack of grasping the nettle will ultimately hurt students more. Employers don’t respect some courses and there needs to be a cull. I do very much respect academic courses but a reset is needed. Universities spend too much on what students don’t universally access.

I notice the USA universities have two charges. Fees for teaching and fees for facilities. Maybe a menu of fees might help?

I disagree, it’s ranked as the 7th best public university in the USA. There will be “better” Russel group universities, but also “worse.”

When I was looking for a comparator, I deliberately didn’t pick UC Berkeley or UNC Chapel Hill.

I mean I think the whole RG label is a sham, but if you use it as shorthand for 'best other than Oxbridge' (which is how I took your post) then as an American I'm thinking the California, Michigan, Virginia, Texas systems.

Fees are separate to reflect that there are different rates of tuition for different subjects. A&H often have lower tuition than health and sciences, the latter have higher fees as well due to lab time etc. I've always wondered why they don't do this in the UK.

Additionally, the state of Florida offers generous scholarships for in-state students. Nearly a million students are on scholarships, the most generous, automatically awarded if their grades are high, they have taken academic courses in high school and achieved good SAT or ACT scores means they will be awarded free tuition and $300 term to help towards other expenses. Pretty nifty.

The state if Florida does this out of self interest. It wants young people who are most likely to be productive and drive the economy forward for everyone to stay in Florida. When students study in another state, they tend to stay there, and Florida loses their future contributions.

I think the UK should consider its policies carefully. What are we trying to achieve? We should take a long term view.

Here is a list of the top US public universities with their tuition costs:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The list in your mind isn’t wrong, it’s just incomplete.

Once student controls were removed expansion was the only logical way to survive - more students meant efficiencies. It’s the universities that failed to continue to attract students to support that expansion that are in the most trouble.

The government set up a competitive market for HE, then froze the price. In a normal market system some companies will fail. Not because of incompetence or amorality. But the consequences of a big university failing is significant to the students, staff and towns affected.

You are missing something here. And that includes that every dollar someone donates to Florida State (as a registered charity which all the state unis are) they can knock a dollar off their federal income tax provided they don’t receive any benefits or services in return for the donation.
so people donate a lot

I had the impression that most of this donating was tied to sports programmes, buildings, and maybe specific scholarships. So not a big impact on operating costs. Do you know how much they take in annually? I don’t. You hear a lot about Harvard, but Harvard is a special case. You wouldn’t compare Warwick to Trinity College Cambridge for example.