Not a week goes by these days without a story in the print or broadcast media about the dire finances of UK universities. Why? As a university chair neatly put it in these pages, ‘all our costs are rising fast, and our largest single source of income is constrained by law.’
The lack of long-term sustainable funding is incentivising risk aversion on the part of governing boards – the inverse of the ‘radical’ and ‘transformational’ thinking that the Office for Students is keen to see them take. This is a point University Alliance (UA) made in our Let’s Get Technical policy briefing, and why we are advocating for a more strategic approach from the next government.
The current situation is leading to a debilitating triangle of sadness with no end in sight: neither the Government nor the Opposition have shown the slightest inclination they will give universities relief anytime soon. This is even though a) the UK makes the lowest proportional contribution to higher education in the OECD and b) recent changes to student loan conditions have resulted in £2.7bn per cohort windfall for the Treasury.
So, what is to be done? Ahead of the Autumn Statement, Alliance universities have knocked heads together and come up with four ways the Government can alleviate the financial situation of universities in the short term without spending a single penny more.
