"3 prestigious universities about to go bust" - on Radio 5 live this morning..

[devilsadvocate77]

...heard a chap who was contributing as part of Nicky's slot (still on) say that three unis are about to go bust, not to mention the many others who are running at a deficit.

Nicky asked if he would name them but he refused.

Any ideas??

It is precisely the spending on shiny new buildings, with not enough international students to fill them, which is causing crisis

I don’t think Warwick are struggling to attract international students and their financial position is widely available to read. I think they’re ok.

I've seen it stated that it's the universities not making large cuts that may be at highest risk because they haven't taken timely preemptive measures to head off catastrophe.

What is the source of Warwick’s huge spending? Is it bank loans?

they haven’t disclosed it but someone on mumsnet has decided it’s bank loans and that they’ll struggle to attract international students. This is a place with an MBA which charges £57k and has international students fighting to get onto.

@MargotwithaT - do you mean me? I haven't a clue about Warwick's finance's and no interest in Warwick. I was just pointing out that a statement saying a University can't be in financial trouble because they've just opened a brand new building isn't true!

My DC likes York and I think it's a good sign they put their planned new Student Union on hold rather than plough more money into to it. At least they're trying to address finances.

The business cases were approved in July 2023, although the publicly available minutes don’t supply any specific detail. It’s a significant capital investment, but from what is available about the Connect Programme it is scheduled over what looks to be the best part of a decade. Reasonable to conclude though that Warwick don’t have a spare £700m tucked away in reserves that can be used to fund all of it.

its last set of accounts do describe the level of proposed capital investment as “ambitious”

Personally I thought the Minute section on the potential adoption of the triple bottom line accounting framework was particularly interesting, though maybe a bit too niche for broader interest. 😄

Though we’ve yet to see the most recent year’s figs Warwick fee income from international students has had a strong upward growth path. And as you say Warwick has an excellent reputation and brand that should help it more so than others in the face of declining international students at the overall sector level. Likely to be a much bigger concern for it neighbouring Coventry University.

Nail on the head. But it wasn't just Blair. Most "Polytechnics" converted to Unis before Blair came to power and turned their backs on vocational courses, adult education, professional exam tuition etc. to concentrate on degrees. Blair ran with the policy and expanded it to his ridiculous 50% aim!

I've seen it stated that it's the universities not making large cuts that may be at highest risk because they haven't taken timely preemptive measures to head off catastrophe.

High-"prestige" universities have addressed this over the past couple of years by dropping their entry requirements sharply during Clearing periods to increase their income from tuition fees. The trouble they will have is that this is likely to lead to some increase in drop-out rates (because their staff and courses aren't adapted to teaching students with lower levels of prior academic achievement) and quite a big drop in student satisfaction scores, so their recruitment will fall in the long-term unless substantial numbers of other universities close or are forced to merge.

As a Gen X I was under the impression that government decided in the late 90's that everyone should be encouraged to Uni to compete on a world stage. So you could be a fantastic nurse, builder or administrator but the proof was the degree you could use as a benchmark p.

However turns out the country actually wants and needs competent, skilled, hard working people regardless if whether they can be arsed to write 10,000 words and reference properly.

Is this all related to huge PFI debt?

I agree with you,TeenagersAngst the push for university and degrees for all was very shortsighted. My youngest Dd was the only one of her friends not to go to uni and the amount of pressure that the 6th form college put on her to go was ridiculous. Luckily she's very stubborn and won't follow the crowd,so she stood firm. She was offered an apprenticeship in a field that she loves and is doing well.
I'm a tradesperson ( with no degree) and there is a huge shortage of every trade that you can think of. I often have a waiting list and almost everyone I know is the same.

We do need poly's back. Apparently we're going to need 100's of 1000's of green energy expert fitters (solar/heat pump etc) to get up to speed with green energy.

That's a great trade for those that prefer practical work.

To answer your question succinctly - York is the only prestigious university I know of in severe financial trouble. Financial pressures on most unis but York accounts are another level

I think young people now are worried about the cost of going to uni, resulting in huge student debt with no promise of a job. I was chatting to a young, successful software engineer and he had studied a Humanities subject at university. He regretted it when he was job hunting and studied on line to become a software engineer. He reckoned that many degrees were a waste of time and on line learning was the way forward. Obviously, many vocational degrees need a university education, medical degrees, law etc but a lot of the money spent at university would be better spent on properly accredited on line courses.
I think, following COVID, a lot of universities moved to teaching online and many students would prefer to save money by pursuing alternative cheaper forms of training.

What would happen if one went bust? Would the students have to transfer mid term etc?

How is prestigious defined? By tariff on entry?

And is that good (versus the bad) online learning free?

I completely agree with you. But also I think posters are missing the point to say they’re not prestigious so it doesn’t matter that they go bust.

Blair thought he was being aspirational and clearly successive governments have had no alternative plan for non academic education.

The universities that go bust are not going to be converted into technical colleges for applied skills training, which would be the obvious use for them. They’ll be sold off for expensive flats. We all know employers will never lower their requirements officially. The government won’t invest in training seeing it as an employer responsibility. Employers will continue to shrug that off.

This country is snobbish and under resourced and will continue to have low productivity and fewer kids will get degrees and therefore fewer workers will get the jobs that don’t need degrees but ask for them. So these closures will contribute to lower social mobility.

Brexit needs to be reversed so we can attract overseas students again and enable our kids to rejoin Erasmus.

Some of the unis will be forced into mergers I think. Sheffield/Sheffield Hallam wouldn't surprise me. Maybe some others too. Cuts costs and will enable them to operate with fewer staff.

University of York
Faces fears that up to 700 jobs could go

This is well out of date. We had a voluntary severance scheme and talks began of a compulsory severance scheme but that has now ended with no job losses as enough savings were found elsewhere.

Where is your info from on this? Curious as I work at York and this does not match what I know.

Please don't worry about York, we are not on the verge of bankruptcy.

University of Brighton has had huge redundancies this year and last year and is in poor shape due to expensive building works, brexit, covid abs a clueless now ex pro vice Chancellor