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Universities Face Cash “Catastrophe” With Threat of Mergers and Course Cuts

by Richard Eldred
21 July 2024 3:00 PM

Universities are facing a financial crisis, according to the Times, with arts and humanities degrees being targeted for closure as demand tanks. Here’s an excerpt:

Three leading institutions are understood to be in serious peril and ministers are being urged to introduce an emergency rescue package to avert “catastrophe” and prevent bankruptcies.

The Government is considering merging one medium-sized university with another and is drawing up plans to “tackle problems within the sector”.

This week, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, is expected to appoint a new interim head of the Office for Students, the regulator that ensures students get value for money and upholds standards of education, to spearhead the recovery.

It has forecast that 40% of England’s universities will run budget deficits this year and warned of closures and mergers. In a sign of the scale of the crisis, a senior Whitehall source said that it “has been at the top of a list of challenges inherited from the last Government”.

Last week, the University and College Union (UCU) held talks with Phillipson and Jacqui Smith, the Skills minister, to urge action to save jobs.

Jo Grady, its General Secretary, spelt out her concerns to them in a letter. “Anything short of an emergency rescue package for the sector will be insufficient to stave off catastrophe,” she wrote. …

Goldsmiths’s proposed redundancies included half of the History and Sociology department and a third of all English and creative writing academics. …

At Winchester, which describes itself as “the university for sustainability and social justice”, jobs have been lost at departments including the Climate and Social Justice Institute.

Robert Beckford, the university’s only black professor who was the director of the institute, was made redundant this month. He said universities that axed such subjects and focused on vocational subjects could become “little more than glorified FE colleges”.

Arts and humanities degrees are being targeted for closure because lucrative overseas students who pay high fees prefer to study science and technology degrees. …

Official figures released on Friday revealed another slump in the number of both U.K. and overseas students applying to start degrees in September. …

Kent said it had reduced a £25 million deficit to £17.5 million. About 50 staff have been shed by voluntary redundancy, and courses including art history and journalism have been cut.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: ArtsEducationGo woke go brokeStudentsUniversities

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36 Comments
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
10 months ago

Why would you want to prevent some going bankrupt? Doesn’t going bankrupt rather suggest that you are not providing a product people want to buy at a price that you can afford to provide it for?

18
0
Arum
Arum
10 months ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I suppose the argument the universities might use is that it’s not a free market, i.e. the poor student pays as much to attend Southampton Solent as they do Imperial.

1
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
10 months ago
Reply to  Arum

It’s not a free market (at least with regard to domestic pricing – don’t know about fees for overseas students) but Imperial and places like it will continue to be massively oversubscribed.

2
0
Arum
Arum
10 months ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

True, and I guess Imperial can use that to their own advantage in student recruitment, but presumably the Dept of Education must believe that all state-supported universities have a valuable contribution to make to education – otherwise, why would they allow them to continue to operate?

1
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
10 months ago
Reply to  Arum

Goodness knows what they think the business case is, or even if there is one. I don’t know what the DofE does with Unis specifically – some kkind of regulation and price-setting? Do Unis get public money directly or is it just through the back door of student “loans”, billions of which will never be paid back. Are those never-to-be-paid “loans” properly accounted for in current budgets?

2
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RichardTechnik
RichardTechnik
10 months ago
Reply to  Arum

That kind of market, like most, wants oversupply of customers. Then the Imperials will select the best customers that will enhance their results and reputation, leaving the lesser cutomers to Solent etc.

2
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JXB
JXB
10 months ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

It’s how the free market is supposed to work to reallocate misallocated resources.

But we have a Socialist Government for which free markets have no place in their central economic planning and control ethos.

Last edited 10 months ago by JXB
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Grim Ace
Grim Ace
10 months ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Socialism doesn’t work like that, comrade. The system decides what is right and wrong. Art and basket weaving degrees are critical to the jobs of the professors and other socialist hangers on that inhabit our ridiculously over supplied FE system. Let them go bust

4
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Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
10 months ago
Reply to  Grim Ace

From the Sunday Times:
Goldsmiths said: “This is a painful time … as we take steps to make our finances sustainable. We want to see the arts, humanities and social sciences valued on a par with science and engineering.”

They were, when they were teaching traditional values, instead of making graduates less employable.

Starting with Major transitioning Polytechnics to unis., then Blair’s and then the Heir to Blair’s & Clegg’s misuse of the Education System, it looks as though the unraveling back to Reality may be beginning.

5
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
10 months ago
Reply to  Norfolk-Sceptic

“We want to see the arts, humanities and social sciences valued on a par with science and engineering.”

With other people’s money.

Philip Larkin once observed that while he was famous as a poet, the thing that enabled him to make a living was being a librarian. I don’t think he was bitter about it – he certainly wasn’t keen on “professional poets” and the lecture circuit.

1
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Steven Robinson
Steven Robinson
10 months ago

The universities were probably the biggest engine behind the extraordinary levels of immigration in recent years. They are also well described as madrasas of hard-left politics, indoctrinating students accordingly. That the Conservative Party allowed these institutions to just go on expanding and churning out left-wing-oriented graduates in their hundreds of thousands beggars belief. I don’t know the exact figure, but 50% or more of graduates are foreign nationals, with entitlement to stay in the country in return for paying their inflated fees. Those who succeeded in getting permanent residency status presumably also got the right to vote. The vast majority will not have voted Tory.

If only the institutions would be allowed to go to the wall.

Last edited 10 months ago by Steven Robinson
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
10 months ago
Reply to  Steven Robinson

“Those who succeeded in getting permanent residency status presumably also got the right to vote.”

And the right to bring over their “families.” This lot, amounting to hundreds of thousands count as legal migrants.

10
0
Less government
Less government
10 months ago
Reply to  Steven Robinson

Glasgow and Edinburgh stuffed to the gunnels with Asian and Chinese students, many paying exorbitant fees for Marxist and Woke indoctrination.

0
0
Arum
Arum
10 months ago

Oh no, Winchester University might just become a glorified FE college, rather than the hub of elite learning it currently is! And then Luton will be the next to go, oh woe!

9
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Roy Everett
Roy Everett
10 months ago
Reply to  Arum

At the bankrupt sale of Winchester University you could make an offer for the statue of St Greta of Thunberg.

Last edited 10 months ago by Roy Everett
5
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
10 months ago

Well if Labour want to build 1.5 million houses over the next five years we are going to need a massive increase in joiners, plumbers, electricians, roofers and all other ancillary trades associated with the building industry so there might be opportunities for the graduate declining classes. Just one major problem – who is going to put them through their apprenticeships? Most of the big firms are reluctant because apprenticeships are expensive and with a poor return as a builder friend informed me.

Poverty beckons.

It’s almost as if this decimation is deliberate.

Surely not.

7
-2
Sue
Sue
10 months ago

It seems there may be rather more common sense and economic nouse among our school leavers than some might have imagined. It’s perfectly possible to obtain training on the job leading to a good future without sinking under £thousands of debt. Who knew?
Clearly not our woke universities.

11
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FerdIII
FerdIII
10 months ago
Reply to  Sue

I work in IT, worked last year with a former brick layer. He self-trained in IT (ops support), took some community college programs, got certified, got a good job and won an award as one of the best IT employees at this very large firm. As you said, not drowning in debt and able to plan on buying a home with his gf. Through his own intelligence and work made that leap from brick laying to IT. Didn’t need an expensive Russell Uni brand to do it.

5
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
10 months ago
Reply to  Sue

Many of our young people just want to sit behind a laptop and make lots of money, not actually get their hands dirty. That’s the problem. Too many youngsters being told they are marvellous for getting 3 Cs or grade 5,.or whatever the latest dumbed down system is. Scrap 70% of so called universities.

3
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JohnnyDownes
JohnnyDownes
10 months ago

Good. The universities have become too large, too numerous and need cutting down to size. Half the subjects on offer do not merit academic study.
There’s a good article in the Telgraph today about it…. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/20/too-many-young-people-have-worthless-degrees/

4
0
Sceptical Steve
Sceptical Steve
10 months ago

As a graduate from Durham University in the 1970s, I can barely recognise the university as it is now. The one common theme over the past 50 years has been that, year after year, they pleaded poverty, with virtually no sense of self-awareness.

In a scandal just a few years ago, they acknowledged that they had appointed a smooth-talking chancer (and apparent benefactor) to the powerful and relatively unchallenged position of supervising the university’s acquisitions of fine art.

The students and the wider public, were unaware of these acquisitions, because most of the worthless objets-d’art were squirreled away in buildings away from the public eye, and the scandal only come to light when the man in question, sadly, became terminally ill and was unable to talk his way out of trouble.

The subsequent enquiry, held after his death, emphasised that “lessons had been learned” which is, after all, what a university education is meant to provide!

8
0
JXB
JXB
10 months ago

Or… they could revert some of them to the polytechnics they were before Idiot Blair decreed they were ‘universities’.

Then we just might provide young people with valuable education in the practical skills we need.

6
0
Alan M
Alan M
10 months ago
Reply to  JXB

I think you’ll find that it happened under Major.

3
0
Baldrick
Baldrick
10 months ago

Most ( but not alll) universities are Royal charter companies. I don’t know if that helps protect them. That means they are like the Bank of England.

1
0
zebedee
zebedee
10 months ago

UMIST and Manchester merged 20 years ago

1
0
Baldrick
Baldrick
10 months ago
Reply to  zebedee

Separate companies still but same address.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04714889

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04741904

UMIST merged with Victoria University

Last edited 10 months ago by Baldrick
0
0
Hester
Hester
10 months ago

Good, they are no longer establishments of learning they are political indoctrination camps they deserve to be wiped our

4
0
RichardTechnik
RichardTechnik
10 months ago

” At Winchester, jobs have been lost at departments including the Climate and Social Justice Institute. Robert Beckford, …… said universities that axed such subjects and focused on vocational subjects could become “little more than glorified FE colleges”.”
But that exactly what they are and were before Blair elevated everything to a pretence at ‘university’ status.
5 decades ago I spent a year doing a Postgrad Cert in Further Ed. There were Technical Colleges, Colleges of HE, Polytechnics as well as Universities etc. They all addressed a separate need and provided a route to employment or higher grade employment before the Blair confusion set in. Unlike my fellow colelgues, I declined to go into lecturing immediately with only a couple of years working experience but having set up a couple of international engineering companies, became very cynical about the ability of those the system churned out to contribute anything from their expensively acquired study.

2
0
coviture2020
coviture2020
10 months ago

Haven’t they brought it on themselves by investing in a market that is diminishing as common sense reveals Tony Blairs image of higher education to be illogical and unsustainable

3
0
adamcollyer
adamcollyer
10 months ago

“a senior Whitehall source said that it “has been at the top of a list of challenges inherited from the last Government”.”

Whoever was that Whitehall source has some brass neck. This challenge was actually inherited from Tony Blair’s Labour government, with its ridiculous target to send 50 percent of young people to university.

Admittedly the pathetic Tories failed to undo that during their 14 years, but that over-expansion of higher education will now have to be undone.

2
0
Norfolk-Sceptic
Norfolk-Sceptic
10 months ago
Reply to  adamcollyer

“… the pathetic Tories failed to undo that during their 14 years …”

those words can be applied to so many policies they inherited from Blair/Brown, readily aided by the civil service, who are still in office.

1
0
Jackthegripper
Jackthegripper
10 months ago

Excellent news. Shut a load of them down and hear the lefty academics squeal as they lose their jobs. Why should they be bailed out, they operate as businesses and should fail as any other business. Supply and demand.

1
0
RTSC
RTSC
10 months ago

Good. At least 50% of them need to close. The last thing the Government should do is bung them more taxpayer funding.

But we’re talking about Labour and its decades-long social engineering project ….. so they will.

0
0
Michael Staples
Michael Staples
10 months ago

The whole Universities sector is a disgrace with massive student debt accumulating in return for many useless degrees, of no benefit to the student or society at large, plus an entry point for massive immigration of foreign students.

0
0
Less government
Less government
10 months ago

Good riddance.

0
0
Less government
Less government
10 months ago

Another institution rotten to the core. Lazy,pompous professors, pontificating members of the SAGE Quango, snouts in the trough, full of fairy tales about climate and woke wet wipes. Chancellors on obscene salaries and benefits. I say again, good riddance.

0
0

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