"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??

Who used to offer technical training? We have always had unis offering top tier technical degrees. Engineering degrees have been a feature of unis for decades. What we have lost are polys and colleges of HE. They took middle tier students and day release employees. They were trained well and the best went on to get professionally qualified. We have tried to replicate it via apprenticeships but not entirely successfully. Lots more to be done and we need to accept degrees are not the only route to being trained.

Alumni? We are not as rich as the USA. Look at what political candidates raise! We run a mile unless we are very wealthy!

Ireland offers students a huge number of options for students who are not your typical academic university aspirants.

As an example:
www.setu.ie/courses/all?page=1&level=6,7,8,9,10&discipline=engineering
The STEM offerings at all levels at the various locations of the South Eastern Technological University.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutes_of_technology_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

@TizerorFizz

If raising money privately isn't an option, and if nobody wants to pay more taxes, then universities are going to go under.

The electorate needs to face facts.

The tax system could be looked at to see if charitable giving could be claimed as a deduction on individual returns as in the US.

Gift Aid?

Also, who do you think will offer technical training? Who will pay for it? Employers are not interested. It still costs money. Someone has to pay. Stop making out you are offering a solution when you are just jabbering.

Absolutely. Who will pay for the technical training?

Technical training is expensive. It costs a lot more as it is lab-based and delivered to smaller cohorts. Skilled technical trainers earn more than university academics and they will certainly need to be paid a hell of a lot more than university postgrads to deliver labs.

These points are usually lost on the jabberers.

Lots of people used to learn on their company equipment being taught be employee trainers. How quickly all this is forgotten, I can see there are challenges to this but apprenticeships work on these lines. The degree ones are too hard to get and too onerous for unis.

@mathanxiety If a few unis revert to being colleges of HE snd maybe offering training allied to local industry/busimess, I’m not against that. We do need rationalization and to understand we need a middle route for more practical qualifications whilst still offering degrees to the high flyers. Many countries do this. These people can still do degrees. Ws used to expect companies to pay and now they pay the apprenticeship levy. Sometimes it’s too onerous and it’s easier to get a graduate. In some areas there’s over supply so it’s easy.

British universities also need to start raising money from their graduates

Do you have a degree from a British uni? They already do. The begging emails from my alma mater never stop.

You do realise that universities have labs for teaching STEM to the undergrads, right?

My college's recent alumni fund drive raised about 90000 pounds. Recently went to Princeton. Endowment 52 billion dollars!!! Incommensurate!

As @felissamy points out the levels raised here are pocket change in comparison with the levels raised in the US. And are tiny proportion of UK university income. The HESA finance tables demonstrate the latter.

Given that I said that "the begging emails from my alma mater never stop", what makes you think that British universities will manage to increase the amount they raise from alumni?

@MaidOfAle nothing, my post doesn’t suggest that, although I picked up on your post which quoted another pp so apologies for the inadvertent confusion I caused. I think we are on the same page on the subject of donations and endowments.

Though to be fair donations and endowments did double between 2014-15 and 2022-23 from £0.5bn to near £1.1bn, though the latter represents just 2% of sector income.

an even bigger issue is that 2 unis - the obvious ones - accounted for around 1/3 of the total.

Oxford’s donation and endowment income was for example 10 times that of Manchester and almost 20 times that of Durham.

Really starts to spell out why all the begging letters.

If you cared to read my post @MaidOfAle, you will see that I have pointed out that skilled technical trainers are paid considerably more than the university postgrads who deliver STEM labs to undergrads in universities.

However, this seems to have completely escaped you @MaidOfAle.

From HESE the striking visual disparity in income from Endowments and Donations.

This is the top 25 - noting that the combined total for rank 6 to 25 only just equals the Oxford (Uni) figure. Several "prestigious" unis conspicuous by their absence.

then ranked 26-50 and keeping the same y axis scale. These 25 total around £55m, as compared with the £180m Oxford figure.

In terms of Investment income a similar(ish) story. Though Oxbridge not quite as overwhelming.

Top 25

and rank 26-50 for Investment income

Depends what constitutes 'prestigious'. Unless it's Oxford/Cambridge/Russell Group then it's not a prestigious University. L

Then "Other" income highlights the Oxbridge gulf from the rest. "Other" being everything left after tuition fees, research income, investments, donations and endowments.

Cambridge and Oxford both over £1 billion in other income - £900 million higher than UCL which has the third highest other income figure

Top 25

and rank 26-50 for other income

You're not seriously suggesting membership of a marketing group equates to all its members being "prestigious"????

I'm suggesting that those universities have almost always been the top ones in the country, even prior to The Russell Group existing. There are so many quite frankly inferior universities that only got that status when UCCA & PCAS became UCAS. Many employers will not look at those inferior universities as it's well known that their grade requirements and subsequent degree requirements/output are not at a comparable level to universities such as Cambridge.

I'll take it from your name checking of Cambridge, rather than say Cardiff, that you recognise that simply being an RG member doesn't make a uni "prestigious" @denpark 😀

I'd agree though that the RG members covers a range of nationally to globally excellent universities. But differ in a view that they are the only ones- Bath, Lancaster, St. Andrews, Loughborough to take but four who are not in the RG, we have a number of strong unis in the 20-40 rank range, and at the lower levels some very well regarded specific course offerings.

The Radio 4 interviewee's use of the word "prestigious" without context, and then suggesting three without naming them was not terribly helpful.

Cambridge and Oxford are considerably older than every other English university and so have several centuries more endowments than everyone else. Some of those endowments have been from royalty, hence colleges called "Kings" and "Queens".

It is not just about age though. Aberdeen University, which is a century older than Edinburgh and I think the fourth oldest, does not seem to appear anywhere in the top 50.