Some universities will go bust thread 2

[GinForBreakfast]

Continuing as thread 1 has filled up.

There was a Oxbridge graduate led petition in the 1850s complaining that courses didn't prepare students sufficiently for work. Graduates outcomes have always been important. What's changed more recently is (1) the increase in importance of rankings and graduate outcomes in those rankings, and (2) the increase in student debt, meaning that post-graduation salary is critical.

@boys3 indeed 😀but the second best time to plant a tree and all that...

Just catching up on the thread. What amount would annual tuition need to be set at to make this all work?

That's a "how long is a piece of string" question, but if tuition fees had risen with inflation then it would be around the £14-15k mark I believe.

Yes, 15k is the figure I see being talked about.

This is an interesting snippet from Hansard, coincidentally from exactly 175 years ago. The same issues (with a slightly different flavour) are being debated today!

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1850-04-23/debates/c738ea02-e62d-450a-be06-fa3eb5eb76e8/EnglishAndIrishUniversities?highlight=macaulay

"After yrs of reading the same thing on MN, it has become almost fact. So my next question is, non RG unis must use latest/ongoing research to inform their undergrad teaching as well, to what extent is this more superior in an RG uni? is it anything to do with where their research has been published?"

Edited to add this is in response to the above - You're using RG university as shorthand for research universities but there are many, many more universities that are research universities than the Russell Group.

Relieved to read this @FoxedByACat !

On English/History/MML degrees I do not think anyone is suggesting scrapping all of them, but perhaps concentration of excellence in certain universities only for those subjects with the top experts would lead to better outcomes and actually increase demand. I think that is what people are trying to say that increasing specialisation of unis may not be a bad thing, although it obviously provides less local choice.
I think we have to be honest and admit that the more obscure subjects will always be slightly elitist anyway. It is a shame, but in many countries things have been going that way for a while where only the children of the wealthy will study subjects with less certain employment outcomes.
To what extent is it realistic to expect more collaboration between universities rather than competition, to foster improved outcomes for undergraduates, overall? Bearing in mind that for the purposes of undergraduates universities do have the role of gatekeepers of pretty much all top employment opportunities.

MFL has much fewer students taking it at A level because it’s hard. MFL is not a vocational degree. Never has been although some have used it for those careers. Others who have completed academic MFL degrees compete with history grads and many more for a wide range of careers. As they always have. No reason why a few universities cannot offer the academic degree. As is the case now in fact.

Not just in the sciences. The law changes literally on a daily basis. Imagine being a law lecturer teaching the Equality Act last month versus this.

@thing47 Engineering is regulated and, in fact most courses are accredited. It’s pretty unusual to find a non accredited course at a former poly. Our local uni is the culprit with Civil Engineering. Nearly every Engineer does an accredited course but the link to which level of professional qualification you can get is determined by the MEng (Chartered) or BEng (Incorporated). Students therefore get some quality assurance but the obvious difference in courses is ability to engage via maths and physics. Not accredited will mean a longer qualifying period to bridge the learning gap. Low tariff means a less challenging curriculum - it’s inevitable. Hence I do think there should be centres of excellence but there can be lots of them!

Would £15k/yr annual tuition be sustainable?

15k annual tuition may be what a good quality degree would cost, but how could the State possibly justify that given how little they spend on state education? Surely both would have to go up, proportionally. Because state education is what the vast majority of children receive, whereas university is not for everyone.

But the idea is that university students pay it back. School students don’t. I’m unsure with the new repayment requirements what proportion of loans are expected to be paid back. I know they changed the terms recently to make it more likely that more will be paid back. I assume there must have been some forecasting done?

@EmpressoftheMundane Where is that money coming from? The taxpayer? Government borrowing? It’s at least a 50% hike and the government already has student loan liabilities through borrowing. How can that be increased by 50%?

Have googled, so for students starting from 2023 65% of students are expected to repay in full. Compared to 27% previously.

Around half will repay in full within a few years.

So hopefully even if the loan was another 15k total most would still be able to pay it back, would just take longer.

It’s just tough as a lecturer currently because as the cost of stuff rises and it’s harder for universities to make ends meet then a lot of stuff is cut. Students don’t feel they’re getting a good service for 9k. I get more direct complaints about value for money now than I did 5 years ago even when the costs were the same. If fees were increased would unis be able to provide a better service and students feel happier or would they just complain more because they’d now feel they were not getting value for money for a larger sum? I don’t know.

But I know it’s hard to tell a student that the reason they’re only timetabled x amount of hours per week and that they feel it’s a “teach yourself course” is because I’m forbidden to put any more hours on their timetable.

If everyone thought £15k in today’s pounds was enough for universities to be sustainable, then we could consider how to fill the delta. But I am not sure, if that is even a sensible number.

I wonder if fees differentiated by level would be palatable? Say £9,000 for Level 4 modules, £12, 000 for Level 5 and £15,000 for Level 6. Foundation year (non-STEM) have already had their fees reduced to £5,000 so the principle is already there. Add in more collaboration - say by region, to facilitate students moving institution (so student who need to can stay local but could move for their final year if they wanted). LLE should help this. In theory…

£15k feels sustainable to me - tbh I think for a lot of unis £14k would work. Certainly £9k was OK back in the day.

to indulge in a bit of narrowly focused devil’s advocacy @titchy

How long was £9k ok for though. If I recollect we did have very low inflation for the following year or two. However isn’t it the reality that a short term fix - for example raising fees to £x - only delivers a level of ongoing financial sustainability if it is then linked to inflation in subsequent years? And if not the new level starts being eroded and the sector is yet again back at square one. So in itself a one off fee raise just kicks the can down a very short road?

the narrow focus bit is that presumably a fee increase if just a one-off sticking plaster would need to be accompanied by something more transformational in terms of both costs and income.

it also seems ironic that they changed the student loan interest from the RPI to the CPI. Or the other way around, whichever makes it worse? But they won’t link the actual fees to inflation. So the govt look after themselves at the expense of the students but chuck universities under the bus.

I remember being cross as they changed my repayment terms and conditions after I’d taken the loans out which I thought was wrong.

If memory serves it was ok for maybe 3 years. Fees increased by £250 after 5 years and things were certainly getting tight by then. Student number control was removed just before then as well so that helped a bit. Not that it really was a number control given the RG wasn’t restricted.

If they do ever get reset they certainly need to be inflation-linked. And we need students to be removed from the (appallingly poorly measured - but for another thread!) migration stats.

Interesting critique but at least at my uni there absolutely has been a huge rise in bullshit jobs over the last 10 years

And I can't believe anyone would defend university travel policies!