Some universities will go bust thread 2

[GinForBreakfast]

Continuing as thread 1 has filled up.

The UCU seems more worried about Palestine @FoxedByACat

Totally. I have genuinely never come across a union before where in local branch meetings people address each other as “comrade” in perfect seriousness. I feel some of them are mentally unstable.

One problem is that I’d guess the majority of academics on this thread (myself included) have no authority or power over high level university decisions regarding the running of the university or finances.

Academics have got quite a good idea about what sort of stuff is good for students and what isn’t good. so if we see ridiculous unworkable suggestions from non academics about what needs to be done we know why it won’t work.

This 👆

I'm a subject lead so I'm technically responsible for the running of a group of courses yet I'm give zero financial autonomy. I have qualifications and significant experience in strategic marketing and leadership - I know my stuff.
At the moment my job seems to be to get my staff to do more as we're not replacing staff when their fixed term contracts run out. Every request for extra resources gets turned down. I know exactly what I need to do to make my department successful but I don't have the resources to make it happen. It's just constant firefighting.

On top of this I'm responsible for international recruitment and yesterday just made me think why am I even bothering 😞

@FoxedByACat Radical suggestion here - but why don’t moderate sensible people stand for election? Standing by and complaining does not get your union reps changed. I’d bet loads don’t vote because there’s probably no elections. People just get in on the nod. At least a union can be turned around to reflect its membership.

Because I have no interest in being a union rep and more importantly I certainly don’t have the time due to doing my job and the job of two colleagues who aren’t being replaced. Plus I fear I’d be the only more central/moderate/sensible one amongst a huge number of Che Guevara wannabes.

I don't stand for election because I'm disabled and work very part-time, I struggle to keep my health condition stable as it is and have no spare energy for an additional role. I do vote when there are more moderate candidates standing.

@FoxedByACat I do hear you but if everyone moderate took the view they did want to change things, they could. The types who are in the union don’t represent you but get to make all the noise. You need a take over.

Realistically the union isn’t going to be able to challenge Gov to a sustainable joined up plan to ensure the sector can deliver what it needs so. (Joined up means the DfE, Home Office, ONS, DWP, HMRC, CMA and DSIT, and local councils all producing coherent strategies wrt to HE, rather than the conflicting ones we have now.)

Much as I despise UCU, the above isn’t really their remit - that’s for sector bodies, lobby groups and senior management teams to do.

To be honest I don’t necessarily think they do a bad job of representing us/me at a local level. They’re very left wing and a some a bit bonkers but the main reps know the law/rules and aren’t scared to speak up and do a good job of representing people.

i’m less sure about the UCU nationally but I’m no expert as I tend to not read anything from them. I voted for a new president/union leader as I can’t stand Grady but I believe she’s still in charge. Shame.

what I do think needs to change is the senior leadership team in the university. Sadly I think the chances of me becoming vice chancellor are remote but I’d give it a bash if asked 😆

I was thinking last night about the amount of SLT in my department’s school when I joined 10 years ago. We had a head of school, a deputy head, and 3 associate profs.

Last year at a head count we had a head of school, 3 deputy heads of school, I’ve lost count of the number of associate profs but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was 10.

of course the number of lecturers goes down every year 🤷🏻‍♀️. It’s this sort of batshittery which needs tackling!

@FoxedByACat It’s the same in schools though isn’t it? Remember a Head and a Deputy Head? What secondary schools have that SLT now? None. Full of deputies and assistants. And we wonder why schools have no money! If we could get back to basics we could actually improve the learning experience. Unfortunately we have a culture of highly paid managers. We need change!

I saw this visual and thought of this thread:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-are-american-universities-funded/

Only 21% of US public university funding comes from tuition, 53% comes from government. I wonder how that compares to Britain.

@EmpressoftheMundane That’s not true of all of them. Some state ones, yes. Others definitely not. Harvard has over $50bn invested too. Read this - gives a broad overview regarding differences in funding.

Slightly higher % do a degree there. It’s also a richer country!

Indeed, private universities are a different situation, but we are trying to compare apples to apples. Also 75% of of university students in the US are educated at Public universities.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/

I still wonder how the 21% student contribution in the US compares to the UK.

@EmpressoftheMundane That’s a much lower % educated publicly than here though. We have around 30,000 in private universities I think - they are pretty rare. In the USA it’s over 4.5 million educated privately.

The federal states put money into the system. If you fund the full briefing I posted you can see how funding works. However you have to accept the USA is richer than we are. They spend money on different things - they have no NHS. We don’t have the same thoughts on financing lots of things. We don’t have a massive military do we! They do. Its priorities and ours are not the same and you cannot get away from wealth. Some people might prefer less tax $ spent on universities and more on heath?

The divide between public and private in the UK is pretty irrelevant though - private providers are still subject to the same regulations, usually get OfS grant funding and students subject to the same loan fee caps.

@titchy Yes. No doubt it is but in the USA it’s financially very different with 4.5 million students going to them. If we are going to compare (not sure why?) we should look at apples and apples.

Why would you want to compare finances with private universities when they have less in common financially with our universities? There is an even larger set of public universities which align more closely.

Focussing on Harvard is like getting carried away with Eton.

i see the university of Sheffield have suspended 28 courses for Sept and just told applicants:offer holders. Looks like all postgraduate courses. But very upsetting for anyone expecting to go.

dd starts her masters in September (not Sheffield) and has declined other offers and got accommodation booked and contract signed. Hope anyone in that position sues the arse off them.

Well, no, I doubt suing would work - as there'll be the caveat that if there is not a sufficient cohort, the courses will not run.

I've taught Masters classes with only 2 or 3 students (in the days when we were allowed to do that). It's actually really hard going for everybody with tiny groups if you've set up the course for a larger seminar teaching environment.

If a university makes an offer to an undergraduate student and then withdraws that offer compensation is made, I know someone who got 15k. If I ended up out of pocket for a years rent after an offer had been made I’d certainly be taking them to court and I think it’s likely I’d win. They’d probably settle before court to avoid publicity though.

Dd threatened legal action against her UG uni and won a settlement worth 1.5k for every student in her cohort due to the shit teaching, they all got cash in the bank….believe me universities will pay out to avoid bad press.

I'm guessing many of you will have seen this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/5407908-kent-and-greenwich-universities-to-merge?reply=147059808

Kent was mentioned in a Times article in April, and @GCAcademic noted them as in trouble back in January.

Lots of reading for HE wonks:
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9012/higher-education-and-funding-threat-of-insolvency-and-international-students/publications/written-evidence/?page=1

White Paper announcements what’s the reaction / thinking from those in the sector?

I think the pressure to prove “quality” will be immense and tip me over the edge 😂

Nothing shockingly unexpected. Fees and maintenance linked to inflation - thank god (though excluded foundation years…) Agreement from CMA to facilitate collaboration - good (though I suspect that won’t be a popular opinion - but I agree there’s a fair amount of homogeneity in the system, though not as much as they imply). Student number control and ability to charge inflationary fees pegged to quality (wasn’t expecting SNC - don’t like the sound of that) - not sure, linked to new iteration of TEF, so will depend what falls out of that consultation. Possibly ok, but relying on measuring quality mostly by data is hugely flawed. Research capital, amending quality research funding, balancing of research to improve full economic costing - could be good, don’t know enough about it tbh. Bit of noise around academic freedom, salaries - just words. Awareness of pension issues in post-92s - nothing to say how they’re going to fix it though so bad.

A small lifeline I think. I’ll be interested what falls out of the change to quality research. It did read that the Gov was more concerned about research than anything else tbh. Though I only skimmed it!