Over the past few months there have been several student demonstrations in the UK to protest against the Government's plans to reform university funding. Next time one of these is held, there may well be taxpayers marching alongside the students, because it looks as if the reforms will result in fewer people going to university, but at a higher overall cost to the public purse.
The essence of the government's plan is to allow universities to charge much more for their courses -- up to a maximum of £9000 a year, versus £3000 currently -- and to establish a system whereby students receive a loan to pay their fees, with the loan repayable once their income after graduation passes a certain level. This is perhaps not as malign a proposal as its opponents (students, the Labour Party and others) have claimed. No student would be denied a place because he/she could not afford to pay for tuition in advance, and loans would be forgiven if a graduate's income failed to reach the prescribed level. However, the government has done a very poor job of selling its proposals, which have been widely portrayed as excluding some people fron higher education altogether, and saddling those who do go to university with a lifetime of crippling debt.
It's now apparent that the scheme is set to have very perverse set of consequences, mainly because the government misjudged how the universities would choose to set their fees. The working assumption in Whitehall was that the average fee would be set at £7500 a year, which the government would pay upfront, to be recouped as the related loans became repayable. The education budget was set on this basis. Most universities have now announced their fees for 2012, when the new scheme kicks in, and almost all have set them at the maximum £9000, blowing that budget out of the water.
It was always assumed that the older and more prestigious universities would opt for the higher fee -- Oxbridge plus the so-called Russell Group were in this category. However, ministers seem to have assumed that lesser academic lights would opt for some sort of fee competition to attract candidates, keeping the overall average down. Very few have done this; even some of the newest universities, the converted polytechnics, are going for the highest permissible fee. Motivations for this seem to vary: for some, setting a lower fee might be interpreted as an admission of inferiority, while for others, charging the maximum fee may have appeared to be the only possible way of ofsetting an assumed drop in student numbers.
It's a fiasco in the making, and there doesn't appear to be a Plan B. Today the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has warned that the higher-than-expected upfront cost of the scheme will force the government either to ration places in higher education, or to make offsetting cuts elsewhere. The continued existence of as many as ten universities could be placed at risk: there are reportedly seven already considered to be at severe financial risk, though the names have not been disclosed.
In the meantime, a group of academics, led by comically coiffed philosopher AC Grayling, are proposing to set up a new, independent college of the humanities in London, charging fees of £18000 a year. With Richard Dawkins joining Grayling at the helm, it's a fair bet that theology won't be on the course list, but some rather odd things will. For example, every student will be required to learn how to read a balance sheet! Today another London college (Royal Holloway) has accused Grayling and his elitist pals of lifting some of their course prospectuses wholesale from the University of London website, which might not be what you would expect to get for your 18 large a year. The best comment by far has come from London mayor Boris Johnson, who claimed in the Daily Telegraph that he had a similar idea many years ago, which he dubbed "Rejects College" because it would have been aimed at students who had failed to get into Oxbridge! The way the government's reforms are going, there should be no shortage of candidates.
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