Exeter cuts

[Itchylegs]

Anyone panicking about large cuts to Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Exeter. Seems like the crisis in HE is getting bigger and bigger. It feels like such a crummy time to go to university.

@Itchylegs Why? It’s not like everything is going. Since the cap on numbers was lifted in 2013, unis grew like topsy. They need to cull. If they don’t attract suitable students, in enough numbers, what should they do? I’d prefer to see a smaller sector that’s offering better quality.

If you want a smaller sector that means a huge amount of social mobility disappears. And we go back to the old elites having access, but not the new talent who don't have economic advantage.

We know that educational advantage maps onto socio-economic advantage. Are you confident your DC will make the cut? Are you happy that many many young people will be denied the opportunity to extend their knowledge & thinking?

According to the Times Higher, these cuts will take around 20% of Arts and humanities academic posts. Exeter's reputation is based on its arts & humanities - it's over-invested in scientists, who haven't done much in relation to the investment the university has made. But it's the classic, important subjects of history, modern foreign languages, English, art history, philosophy and so on , that are taking the brunt of this. It seems to be callow instrumentalisation.

@Wadsworthy No it doesn’t! Do you think all dc from less desirable areas all get low grades? Thats putting those dc in their “not good enough” box in the first place! If these dc really want a place at a RG uni, quite a few subjects accept lower grades but you have to study these subjects. There’s plenty of bright, well informed, less well off people who would still get in.

Exeter cut MFLs before. Thats why dd didn’t go there. They have also over expanded like nearly all the others. They often lower grades a lot at clearing. Get the deserving pupils to study MFLs and they don’t need top grades and they will walk in, nearly everywhere.

However no university can keep going without bums on seats and those bums aren’t studying humanities so change that! MFLs are hard, so dc cannot manage them, and schools are woeful at encouraging them. There’s loads of other HE courses available and Exeter will be one of many to cull courses. I don’t agree with low contact teaching and questionable degrees. I’d also prefer low ranking unis to be colleges of HE again and focus on vocational training and qualifications. Degrees can be done elsewhere at pre 92 universities.

Totally agree with you. The sector is on its knees. Workloads are insane. Despite what people assume, staff numbers absolutely did not increase proportionally to students numbers because the funding model is not fit for purpose. You just need to look at the fact that student fees have been stagnant (in real terms for a decade). Salaries are so much smaller in real terms but they cannot stagnant in the same way, and costs have skyrocketed.

i think kids can still have a good experience but I just need to think k about workload and morale across the sector to know it will be less than the one I had. Although there is probably a bit more innovation in some teaching methods so hopefully that balances a little.

@phyllidafosset So cut the student numbers then! It’s a bonkers system. I fully agree with HE but it’s not sufficiently differentiated. Neither are 1 in 10 grads getting jobs and can the nation afford this? The university sector has multiplied over 40 years and there’s a vast number of jobs in comparison to the 80s. It’s been used to upskill some cities and towns in terms of better paid work but, the grads are not staying in these areas and getting grad work. Lincoln and a few others are like this. It’s not sustainable.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner the funding structure means that when students fall, income falls. The issues in the sector are not related to there being too many students, it is that the money Home students pay gets nowhere close to covering the cost of HE and there is not anywhere near enough funding from other sources to meet the shortfall. Universities were forced to plug those gaps with international students, but when the previous government (one of them) made student visas so much harder to get, that plaster was ripped off and the crisis was accelerated and deepened.

Whether there are (or should be) other equally or more beneficial routes for school leavers is a separate question/issue.

Not surprised to hear this it is horrible to work in HE at the moment.

I am at a uni which is cutting some of its MFL programmes apparently (not my department but this is what we heard). Higher education is an absolute shitshow at the moment.

i have spent the last month chasing people for exam marks, entering them onto our woefully unfit for purpose systems and then manually checking every single student so I can be sure the maths adds up. All while covering a long term sick colleague who left us in the shit. (Not because they were sick- that can’t be helped but the general lack of record keeping which really needs to be meticulous).

I’ve worked so many unpaid hours that I’ve lost count, I don’t sleep properly and my mental health is shot. The 30-32k a year isn’t reward enough for the poor admins if I’m honest.

I need to leave but the job market is crap but I’m feeling quite desperate now.

Exeter has been letting in students with grades significantly below published typical offers for ages in some humanities subjects and some quite senior academics have given up caring about this and about poor standards in some subject areas.

There really is no point in having so many university students. Obviously lots of people losing their jobs is very unfortunate for them but the whole university sector needs a reckoning. Money isn't being spent wisely on education and training in the UK.

Indeed it has. Oxford has not increased numbers! I suspect Cambridge hasn’t either. The universities have issues because they over extended. M&S did this 25 years ago in the USA. It pulled out! Universities have to run like a business because the funding model dictates that they do, but it’s meant endless expansion and poor quality too often. This needs to stop. Also you cannot make dc take these subjects! I’d much rather we culled numbers at the least good universities (start with some arts and law degrees) but you cannot force dc into subjects they don’t want. The university has to amend its offering, like any business!

Universities are not businesses: they are charities.

And god this attitude makes me sick.

@Itchylegs Chsrities? Since when? My attitude is cut your coat according to your cloth. People working for not for profit organisations always think everyone else will bail them out! Many are so lucky to have teen their interests to a high level and still be working in that field. Like everyone else, if it’s in recession, it means employment changes. Universities are not special cases and most have a shed load of debt! They most certainly are not charities - and most of them have volunteers who get paid £0. I hope you are not teaching business or economics. God help us indeed.

If universities were pure businesses then they would be able to set their own fee levels for all students. They would also (potentially) opt out of USS and union pay negotiations

ETA and most universities are registered charities, because their primary purpose is education

Universities are "charities" (not for profit enterprises with a social mission) but recent administrators run them like businesses for all sorts of reasons. There are universities still run on a different paradigm by more sophisticated leaders.

@Ceramiq That’s not the definition of a charity! They simply are not for profit organisations. Many of which have been poorly run. If they were publicly quoted companies, they would be very different!

I'm not defining it, I'm clarifying it. People understand "charities" wrongly - often only thinking of grant making charities for example.

Some have been run very incompetently.

It’s not surprising that languages are being cut in some universities with the decline in schools. Languages are perceived as difficult. Subject choices and timetabling and attitudes of senior management don’t help. In the last twenty years or so there has also been a decline in the quality of teachers specialising in MFL. The subject knowledge of some teachers is poor, not worthy of a degree at all.

That’s my experience in my region but from what I read it’s not so different in many other parts of the country. I would rather have centres of excellence for less popular subjects with fewer universities offering them.

Some universities make more money from renting out accom than course so in that sense they are very much a business

How many businesses have their selling price dictated by another organisation. The money they get from home students is fixed (and not enough) so they encouraged foreign students where there is more flexibility. Then number of foreign students was limited

@Newgirls they have to find some way to make ends meet

MFL have been suffering for ages in schools (thanks to "Europhile" Tony Blair) and the ending of Erasmus funding and exchange partners has made the 3rd year abroad (an extra year for a degree qualification) almost unviable. In addition, there are many young people at university in the UK studying other subjects with total fluency in one or more MFL. MFL as taught at UK universities are really pretty shockingly bad as a competitive qualification on the labour market, as data shows very consistently.

Rail companies and gas, electricity, and water companies all have their selling price cap set by the government.

@SadiraOfTyr they don’t all charge the same though do they. I live in an area that has the highest bills in one of those sectors

Rail companies are being nationalised.

Utility companies may have certain tariffs capped, but business rates, overnight rates etc are not. Additionally, I don’t know if the cost cap is at or below the cost of delivery, but that certainly is the case for the average home student.

ETA I believe the same is true of rail companies - whilst certain fares can’t go up by more than a percentage linked to inflation, I think others can. Also - home student fees did not rise with inflation or at all for many years, whereas price caps have largely risen by some percentage.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner most universities are registered charities rather than registered companies, whether you think that accords with your internal definition of charity or not.

@Newgirls some, yes. But many universities won’t own the accommodation, a private company will, and the uni might get a bit for a brand name. Or if they did build the accommodation themselves, some of the rent monies will go to servicing debt on the build costs.

Well thats not actually true! Don't think people really understand what a university is

@SheilaFentiman Msny businesses have unions. Fewer these days for obvious reasons. Universities can follow the law on redundancies. They are not a protected sector and can alter courses as they see fit.

@Htcunya Yes. My view entirely. High quality and fewer places might well suit many students far better.

All businesses have their selling price dictates by external forces and their own decisions within that. It’s breathtaking to think that people think fees are the only consideration here. All businesses look at overheads and msny are dictated to them! They cannot just rise prices because if competitors don’t, they lose sales. Everyone has to consider what their selling price can realistically be. If it’s too expensive to continue, companies alter their products and trim costs or go bankrupt. Where there’s competition, there’s a lot of constraints on selling price .

Just because a cap on numbers was lifted, the universities didn’t have to go headlong into vastly increasing student numbers. There was no requirement to expand and dilute the quality. They did that all by themselves. Everyone with an ounce of sense knows money from a government is not guaranteed. The privatized industries discovered that in the 50s-80s. They were starved of investment. Universities have borrowed huge amounts on a rising tide of popularity but it’s been clear for a long time that when fees tripled, they were not going to keep pace with expenditure in the future. Constant agitation about fees would have told unis that! But - universities just kept going. There needs to be a recalibration of what is offered and by whom.

Degrees are no longer a passport to greater earnings. Some are but too many are not. This needs serious consideration because people will turn away from degrees where work is difficult to find afterwards.

I agree, MFLs have been totally marginalized in school because they need some rote learning and more effort than many subjects. Dc don’t get a chance in many schools yet we need the skills MFLs offer in the wider sense. But we aren’t open to preparing a well educated workforce at the highest level. Hence far too grads get min wage or no job at all. Now that is a waste of their money, their parents money and the taxpayers money and all our loan debt (£250 billion?) and the unis will feel the backlash.