Some universities will go bust thread 2

[GinForBreakfast]

Continuing as thread 1 has filled up.

The USA spends more per head on university than any other country in the world apart from Luxembourg.
UK universities spend the third most per head.
UK universities need to look at what countries like Ireland, France and Germany are doing to provide a university education for less than half the price per head of a UK degree.

www.statista.com/statistics/707600/higher-education-spending-student/

Well instead of relying on your impressions why don’t you do some research. A quick google will bring you the FSU foundation accounts. That shows 29m in donations and a foundation with an overall endowment of 1.1 billion. That is for a state university founded in the 1850s.
for comparison Warwick had £4m donations on an endowment of some £400m and cf Trinity college Cambridge with £9.6m donations on a £2.2bn endowment which is about as good as it gets in the uk university scene.

Harvard endowment over $50bn and they have collected 1.1m in the last 48 HOURS (yes that is not a typo) from alumni and others because of trump pulling federal grants.

https://wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/we-spend-a-lot-on-he-or-do-we/

Well instead of relying on your impressions why don’t you do some research.

Charming.

You haven’t provided any clarity on what restrictions there are on the endowment. This isn’t so easy to find. Also, FSU and UF are two different institutions. (I would expect UF’s to be even larger.)

That’s really interesting. It looks like we spend similar to the US, more research snd a lot less ancillary.

Folks in the USA complain about tuition, but I am trying to show that there is a big difference between going to s public university in state vs going out of state or to a private university. We have little to learn from the private scene, but there may be good ideas in the public scene.

Well, yes, we could emulate the French system where there is a 50% drop out rate at the end of year one.

It would certainly be interesting to see the posts from parents on these boards when that happens.

This explains Harvard endowment, no they cannot just spend all that money. It's an incredible asset though
https://finance.harvard.edu/endowment

The US is much more advanced in alumnae fundraising, this is something UK universities could learn from.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20z60vxvmjo

"Most policymakers think of endowments as a chequing account, a debit card where you can withdraw money and use it for any purpose," said Steven Bloom, the spokesperson for American Council on Education. "But it's not."
While Harvard's endowment is eye-popping, it says 70% of the money is earmarked for specific projects - which is typical for educational endowments, according to Mr Bloom.
Harvard has to spend the money the way the donors have directed, or it risks legal liability.

If you read the report (instead of making assertions and requiring others to do it) you would see that the non-donated income of UF exceeds their expenditure by $44m a year so the donations are jam on top. Doesn’t really matter if they are limited to sports or scholarships or whatever. But if you want to know look at the report and it splits out by donations which are restricted as to purpose and which are not. A good proportion are not but I didn’t memorise them and I can’t remember the number.

30% of 50bn is still a lot of discretionary spend

From the page I linked to:

Distributions from Harvard’s endowment provide a critical source of funding for the University. The endowment distributed $2.4 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024 contributing over a third of Harvard’s total operating revenue in that year. The overwhelming majority of the funds that make up Harvard’s endowment are donor directed to specific programs, departments, or purposes (dedicated scholarships, named professorships, etc.), and must be spent in accordance with terms set forth by the donor. Payout from these funds can only be spent in support of the fund’s designated purpose. Unrestricted funds, which account for approximately 20 percent of Harvard’s endowment, are more flexible in nature and are critical in supporting structural operating expenses and transformative, strategic initiatives.

I think Harvard is a bit of a red herring.

@GCAcademic Maybe too many go to university in France. Lots of countries regulate participation by drop outs. Not uncommon at all. I bet there aren’t many from the Grande Ecoles! There’s a natural assumption that you go to university in some countries and that you try it out. No harm leaving if it’s not for you.

@GinForBreakfast Major companies failing is also a very big deal in a location. Oxford didn’t expand student intake. Many companies make efficiencies to remain strong and competitive.

What efficiencies by being bloated? Universities, according to this thread, are spending vast amounts on getting students through the door (who then need vast sums spent on them to stay) giving expensive help to facilitate everything they need in order to get the degree, ensuring teaching groups remain small because heaven forbid a lecture theatre with too many folk in it, and spending inordinate amounts to ensure universities are a social experiment. All of these things cost money most universities don’t have never mind the sums spent (borrowed) on accommodation, and the land it’s taken up, where no one else can live.

Smaller, leaner and fitter can make perfect sense if the offering is great. Expansion hasn’t saved anything. Over expansion causes huge problems and economies of scale are a joke in HE. Scale up equals spend way more and get into debt. Scaling up to get economies of scale works with mergers. Fewer staff teaching larger groups. Sharing sites and facilities. Universities didn’t do it. They continued to expand their fiefdoms and spent (borrowed) far too much because the business model depended on attracting more and more students. A diluted offering with poor outcomes for too many students is turning customers away and the cost piled onto fees is too much.

The number of people on this thread pontficating with no idea of what universities do, or how we teach and research. Thank goodness they just spout their ignorance on an obscure corner of the internet. They'd not survive a day in a university.

@TizerorFizzthere really are no examples of “smaller leaner fitter” universities who are more financially sustainable because of their smaller size. They’ve gone through the same savage cost cutting as the bigger ones.

HE is not a market that rewards agility in the same way as digital or FMCG. The regulatory and governance overheads are large and growing. The market for students who want to study at a small/specialist university is small.

You can’t argue on the one hand that there are too many universities and then on the other that universities should be smaller. “Bloated” has never been defined on this thread, it’s just a slur thrown about by people pretty ignorant about what’s happening inside HE.

The UK has world class universities and enormous soft power as a result. It seems madness to give that up. But that’s a choice for politicians and the electorate. There’s plenty of countries up and coming willing to take on that mantle.

spending inordinate amounts to ensure universities are a social experiment.

What does this even mean? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Crazy isn’t it!

But what do you guys who work in universities think is the answer??

Im guessing you think it's more funding. But in these days of desperate funding need on the NHS, on schools, on social care, on defence, and when taxes are sky high and cost of living out of control, should universities get funding instead of any of the others?

What I find difficult to understand is why our country's brightest brains, who are probably to be found in our universities, aren't actively trying to find the solution. Or, if they are, why it's not being communicated!

There's some interesting points being made on this thread. I don't agree with changing the model of university teaching to purely mass lectures. Universities already utilise large lectures where they can. I would guess most universities have used their funds over the past decade to build even larger lecture halls to accommodate more students. I'm pretty sure DD"S university has lectures which accommodate 400 students particularly in first year where there are more core modules. Of course the real valuable learning and exchange of ideas is expanded and consolidated in smaller seminars following those lectures.

If we think good education is rows of hundreds of student listening to one teacher we are going backwards. We don't want that to become the norm in schools either.

The situation is so complex. The conservative government must bear the responsibility for the mess they made. What a ludicrous situation we are now in and how difficult it is to put the genie back in the bottle.

There are many losers. Parents who are having to pay more to support their children. Graduates who find their degree devalued. Students mental health, as they feel the constant pressure to achieve against the backdrop of higher debt and fewer job opportunities. University cities that have seen their areas overrun with students, rents rise and housing being taken over by landlords who find it more lucrative to rent to students. The taxpayer who fund an ever greater amount of loans that won't be repaid. 2nd and 3rd tier universities watching their typical students get scooped up by the top tier universities who now need more home students to fill their spaces as overseas students fall away. Who are the winners from this system? Private landlords? Some of the less clever, lazier students from wealthy backgrounds who can now ensure a place at a bigger name university? The construction industry? What a mess. The answer can't be the status quo, a worse student experience or ever increasing loans.

I’ve answered this already in this thread.

There have been lots of answers on this thread, it’s just that there isn’t just one answer.

The issues are also connected with wider social and economic problems. E.g. the housing crisis has enabled student LLs to charge far too much for accommodation. If housing wasn’t so scarce, student rents would be more affordable.

I think we are underappreciating how goo a university is for the local economy though. A small and rather isolated city like Lincoln , for example, benefits a great deal from a university population so university and university expansion is not driven only by the HE sector and governments.

I think Buckingham University is run on a very tightly driven , capitalistic model with lost of the measures some say they want- and yet I am also fairly sure it is a university talked of with derision for its quality of offer by some of the same posters.

The ' I once had a lecture with 900 people in it and I'm fine' is the new Mumsnet chicken it seems.

Regarding funding, 3 years of undergraduate is 46k on average, per student.

Contrast that with full time education 4-18 - for all 14 years it is only approximately double that, for 14 years.

In the 46k, a significant percentage is maintenance, due to the live away from home model.