By Lucy Phillips
18 March 2010
The financial hurdles facing English universities came under the spotlight again this week after provisional public funding allocations for 2010/11 were released.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England this week set out how £7.3bn of grants, a reduction of £573m since last year, would be distributed in the next academic year.
It is the first time in 15 years that funding has been slashed in the sector, which has enjoyed big increases in public income, topped up by student tuition fees.
Around half of colleges and universities will have funding cuts next year, with the worst affected – London Business School – losing 12%. Other institutions facing cuts in excess of 10% include the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Cancer Research.
Aside from major cutbacks to capital projects and funding for national programmes in areas such as IT and employer liaison, £76m will be taken from funding for preserving old and historic buildings, some postgraduate provision and extra support for foundation degrees. Budgets for other areas of teaching, research and widening participation are largely being protected, with allocations slightly biased towards institutions specialising in Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
Hefce chief executive Sir Alan Langlands said universities were ‘starting from a strong position’. After taking into account a shift in capital funding, the overall cash reduction amounted to 1.6%, which was ‘very modest’. He said the funding council had deliberately not gone for ‘across-the-board cuts’, which would result in ‘equal misery’ and claimed they were unlikely to result in students being taught in larger class sizes.
‘I think it is quite likely universities will be able to cope with these without in any way undoing the student experience,’ he added.
But Universities and Colleges Union general secretary Sally Hunt said: ‘We believe the cuts could lead to thousands of jobs being lost and the staff that survive the cull left with more students to teach and less time to spend with them. Anyone who thinks this won’t massively impact on the quality of education is living in a dream world.’
Langlands argued that universities had been planning for funding cuts. ‘Most have surpluses… and are behaving responsibly and taking steps to prepare for a rather different world,’ he said.
Universities UK president Professor Steve Smith welcomed the protection for core funding but said: ‘While a rebalancing of funds can secure a relative stability in the short term, the sector needs to be making strategic choices to develop a sustainable funding structure for the future.’
