A lecturer has warned of university overcrowding, following a December announcement from Lord Mandelson that Higher Education funding is to be cut by £398m this year.
In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) dated the 22nd December 2009, the business secretary declared the need to withdraw some £135m to meet the additional pressures caused by higher than anticipated numbers of students seeking support during the recession.
Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the University Lecturer’s Union, claimed this week that budget cuts would mean “some of the biggest class sizes in the world” by 2013, and also claimed that “the dreams of many hardworking parents for their kids to go to university…will be over”.
Together with £83m “efficiency savings” outlined in October 2008, universities will face a massive decrease in their funding as of this year.
To meet the cuts, £84m will come from the capital funding budget, designated for buildings and equipment, and a further £51m will be taken from university teaching.
Some universities will also face penalties where they have exceeded government caps on student recruitment.
Alongside these reductions, Mandelson pledged to maintain support for research funding, which will receive a £109m increase in funds.
In the letter to Hefce, Mandelson also outlined plans for more degrees to be completed over two years rather than the conventional three. He intends to use these shorter degrees to broaden university education so as to include more students. This, he believes, would create more Foundation and Fast-track degrees most appropriate for more vocational qualifications.
The Conservative Party has hit back at these money-saving schemes. Shadow universities and skills secretary, David Willets, criticised the cuts that Mandelson has put in place. The party has promised they would make 10,000 more university places available, should they be in power.
Oxford University also faces the withdrawal of additional funds, from an allocation shared with Cambridge University, amounting to around £10m between the two institutions.
David Palfreyman, Bursar of New College and director of the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies warned that such cuts could threaten the tutorial system which makes the university so unique.
Palfreyman, who edited a paper on the Oxford Tutorial in 2008, said that it is “too early to tell exactly what [the funding cuts] mean” but he questioned whether small tutorial sizes would be sustainable when the Oxford-specific cuts combine with the nation-wide plans for funding withdrawal.
The most optimistic situation, he suggested, would see funding cuts avoid the crucial area of teaching. However, it is possible that teaching could face a 15 or 20 % cut.
He was quick to dispel the idea of Oxford adopting Mandelson’s proposals for more two-year degrees. “I can’t imagine us thinking about it,” he commented, citing the concentrated studying Oxford entails as reasoning for the inappropriateness of shorter degrees at the University.
Mandelson’s announcement has been met by renewed discussion of the issue of university funding across the Christmas period, including David Blanchflower’s calls for higher tuition fees for richer students. A government inquiry into tuition fees, chaired by the former BP chief Lord Browne, is already in progress.
