Photo by Geoff Whalan |
Since
2011, Higher Education has been fundamentally restructured in the UK. Once a
well-regulated, stable sector with capped student numbers and secure government
funding, Conservative governments have restructured it into a free market service.
Tuition fees of £9000 per year (now £9250) replaced government grants as main
university income. In 2015, the cap on student numbers was removed transforming
potential students into a huge market, for which universities are now in fierce
competition (see The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketisation in British Higher Education).
Desperately
trying to survive and grow in the market, universities have indebted themselves
and re-directed funding away from staff costs to prestigious infrastructure
projects, intended to impress potential future students during ever more lavish
university open days. Unsurprisingly, industrial relations have soured with
staff resisting salary and pension cuts as well as the imposition of ever
higher workloads. In turn, students have been transformed into customers, who
purchase a good in order to secure a high paying job in the future.
Although
not officially private corporations, this quasi market has pushed universities
into behaving like one. As Ben
Spies-Butcher and Gareth Bryant point out in the Australian context, ‘by
forcing universities to seek out private income, governments have encouraged
them to increasingly think and act like private entities.’ It is this
transformation, which is at the heart of UK universities’ current response to
the crisis. In view of potentially huge losses of income with foreign students
predicted to stay away in September due to travel restrictions and the intake
of domestic students more insecure than ever, universities have shifted into a
mode of budget cuts to prepare for the more hostile markets. As a recruitment
freeze is established, already published job advertisements are withdrawn.
Staff have their personal research accounts frozen and are told not to book any
research travel for the foreseeable future.
The
most drastic response to date has been announced by three internationally
well-known universities this week. As the Guardian reported on 2 April, ‘staff on fixed-term contracts, including
visiting lecturers, researchers and student support workers, at Bristol,
Newcastle and Sussex universities have been made redundant or told their
employment will or may end prematurely, or not be renewed’ (The
Guardian, 2 April 2020). For a sector, which
has employed more than 50 per cent of its staff on insecure contracts, the
potential consequences are enormous.
This is not, however, the only possible
response to ensure that HE in the UK remains robust in view of the coronavirus
crisis. Worried that universities will intensify the competition for students
by making unconditional offers in the struggle for financial survival, first
calls have been made to re-introduce the cap on student numbers to ensure that
all institutions have a fair chance (The
Mirror, 30 March 2020). As the Labour Party Manifesto of the 2019
elections shows, a permanent cap could easily be combined with a return to
government grants and the abolition of tuition fees. As proper public
institutions with guaranteed public funding, universities would be much more
robust in times of economic crisis. Instead of making people redundant, they
could guarantee continuing employment.
Unfortunately, those currently in charge of our universities are the
least suited people to confront the crisis. Having driven the marketization of
HE and often made their career in this process, the only response they can
think of are cuts. Staff members, however, should have no illusions. Their
extra efforts now will not be rewarded by a system focused on maximising annual
surpluses. Only a fundamental restructuring under new leadership is able to re-establish universities as proper public institutions and HE as a public good.
Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk
Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
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