HEPI recently published a collection of essays on the issue of funding undergraduate degrees, curated by HEPI Director of Policy and Advocacy Rose Stephenson. Over the next few weekends, we will be running select chapters from that collection as Weekend Reading.
This chapter was authored by David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014 and author of A University Education (2017).
Our universities face a funding crisis. Fees of £9,250 are not sufficient to cover the costs of delivering higher education to the typical student. But many people, including many policymakers, do not believe this. They think it looks like quite a lot of money for modest contact hours and limited numbers of lectures. So, the first thing universities need to do is to be as transparent as possible about the costs they face.
Approximately £1,000 of the fee goes on mandatory access arrangements – this funds access and participation work in institutions. The other stages of education have separate capital grants from government, for example for building projects. However, I vividly remember the Treasury doctrine that tuition fees would have to cover the interest costs of borrowing that universities would need to fund any capital projects; so that is another use of the fee income. And although they are called ‘tuition’ fees they are really university fees covering everything from the cost of the sports facilities to burgeoning mental health facilities.9
Explaining these costs is the first step.
