University finance, while not the most exciting topic of conversation, has understandably absorbed the attention of both students and the national media this week. ‘Education, education, education’ seemed like good priorities at the time, but with funding cuts that reportedly could lead to the closure of up to thirty institutions, these priorities seem to have been waylaid and ‘educashun educashun educashun’ might be what we settle for as a nation. This isn’t good enough.
“While other countries see education as a means to economic recovery, we choose to compromise it”
Thousands of courses and places are to be axed in the next few years, just when applications have increased by tens of thousands. This obvious shortfall threatens the viability of our higher education system, and the competitiveness of the UK as a whole. For years we have been told that everyone should aspire to higher education, and the places would be there. Just as Blair’s form of aspirational socialism seems to have taken hold, and young students really are aiming for university as a serious route to their futures, this no longer has the commitment and backing from Westminster that it requires.
Other nations are funding university education as means to innovation and economic recovery, and yet we choose to compromise ours. The deficit the country faces needs serious attention, but cutting funding to education sends the wrong message about our priorities. This is about more than money; it is about our national priorities.
“The shortfall in places and courses threatens the viability of higher education”
Of course funding cuts have to be made across the board, but financial support is the way by which the government demonstrates its
commitment to a policy. Small cuts here and there can be dealt with, but they are only the beginning. They ease the pain of large cuts until these are no longer noticed. And the proposed cuts are not small, nor insignificant. Of course efficiency savings should be made, but does this not simply transfer the onus of the funding cuts from the government to individual institutions?
Increasing tuition fees is far from a perfect solution, but there seems to be little realistic alternative, particularly in the current economic climate. Alumni campaigns are all well and good (look to the US for how to do this properly) but relying on donations and endowments as a serious source of funding disadvantages those universities that don’t have Oxford’s calibre of alumni. Higher education for the benefit of anyone and everyone who wants it should be our ideal, but relying on the government for long-term sustainable funding no longer seems to be a viable alternative.
The implications of funding reductions on our years at Oxford are yet to be decided, but it is those arriving in years to come, let alone those not fortunate enough to gain a place at university, that will endure the consequences. These decisions may be easy to sneak out in an announcement on December 23rd, as Mandelson attempted to do, but the damage, once enacted, is far more complicated to undo. We should be constantly raising the bar and our expectations of university, not sinking it.
