Of the few things that Britain is still left with from its old glory days are its universities. Despite complaints of dumbing down, major British universities consistently rank high in international league tables outclassed only by American Ivy League institutions. But like nearly everything else which once put “Great” into Britain and which has either disappeared or is in decline, British universities are also under threat.
In fact, they have been dying a slow death for almost a decade as Brits split hair over the “best” way of funding them. At the heart of the crisis (and I am saying this at the risk of being called a neo-liberal) is the old European liberal consensus that says that everyone, irrespective of his or her social or economic background, is entitled to free education because the knowledge they gain eventually benefits the society at large.
The argument is that as everyone benefits from having doctors, engineers, scientists, nurses, teachers, lawyers and, why, even bankers and well-educated political leaders, the nation as a whole should invest in them. It is seen as the state's responsibility to provide free higher education to its citizens. Universities, it is argued, have as much, if not greater, right on taxpayers' purse as state-funded schools or the National Health Service.
In plain English, nobody wants to pay to go university even as many of the same people who oppose market in higher education have no qualms about sending their children to expensive private schools arguing that ultimately they want the “best” for their children. The Government, for its part, says that it simply doesn't have enough money to subsidise universities beyond a point and if people want world-class education they must pitch in.
To be fair, it is increasingly, if grudgingly, acknowledged that people who wish to improve their career prospects through university education must be prepared to share its cost, and the debate is now largely centred on how much should they be expected to pay without putting unfair burden on their families.
Currently in England and Wales (Scotland has its own system), native students and those from the European Union pay £3,250 a year tuition fee (at least one-third of what their peers from non-EU countries pay) for which they are given soft loans that they start to repay only after they graduate and start earning more than £15,000 a year.
But the system, introduced in 2006 after a big row, has been criticised by both students and universities. Students say it is leaving them with debt levels that will take them years to pay back.
“Graduates are facing ever more difficult choices over whether to invest, start a family, get on to the first rung of the mortgage ladder, start a pension and, of course, which career path to take,” according to Gemma Tumelty, a former president of the National Union of Students.
Universities, on the other hand, complain that the current tuition fee plus the grant they get from the government are not enough to meet the growing cost of teaching and research.
Universities, especially the Russell Group of universities which include Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Imperial College London, want the cap on tuition fee to be abolished and say that they should be allowed to charge “varying” fee for different courses depending on their cost and popularity.
Experts reviewing the system are under pressure from both sides to recommend an alternative funding system that is closer to their position but meanwhile universities are struggling. For the second consecutive year tens of thousands of students will lose out on university places because most say they have no money to provide extra seats. And the crisis is set to deepen as reports say they have been asked to prepare for cuts of up to 35 per cent between 2011 and 2015 as part of the Government's austerity plan to cope with recession. Such deep cuts at a time when the Government is also encouraging more students from poorer backgrounds to apply for university courses are bound to damage standards.
Vice-Chancellors are in despair amid concerns that universities may be forced to scrap courses, sack teachers and increase their dependence on fee-paying foreign students.
“If the numbers (about the proposed cuts) quoted are realised, it would be far worse than anything universities have expressed since the 1930s. In terms of expenditure per student, it worse than anything in recent memory,” Professor Gareth Williams of the London's Institute of Education said.
There are fears that many universities — according to one estimate as many as 30 — may not survive the proposed cuts. Some of these fears may be exaggerated but signs of decay, most evident in the way universities are hawking their degrees to the highest bidder (aka the foreign student), are hard to escape and the only way to avert a collapse is for Britons to realise that in the market-driven consumer society that they have helped create there are no free lunches — even in the hallowed halls of Oxford and Cambridge.
