Is the poor management a direct consequence of the incentives provided by England's odd student finance system though? I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think the question is worth posing.
Replies
I mean, the removal of the caps on student numbers must carry a large part of the blame, right?
sep 3, 2025, 11:48 am • 0 0 • view
I mean, people talk about these things like the sector didn't itself lobby for them!
sep 3, 2025, 11:51 am • 5 0 • view
The reason why there is no reward or incentive structure for teaching so a bunch of anchor institutions are more over-extended than their genuine peers in any country, the shift of unis into DfE which is always bad for HE's interests...these are 'made in the sector' problem.
sep 3, 2025, 11:52 am • 2 0 • view
What's the story behind the move into the DfE? I'd assumed it was just an awkward compromise to get Theresa May's reorganisation through. Are you saying that the HE sector actually pushed for it?
sep 3, 2025, 11:55 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah, the HE sector's leadership really wanted it, VCs have a passion for being in with schools, not in BIS or Science or whatever it is called this week.
sep 3, 2025, 11:56 am • 3 0 • view
Always creates terrible policies because they are never valued in the DfE, but university management loves to lobby for it.
sep 3, 2025, 11:56 am • 3 0 • view
Also I'd be curious to know which institutions you'd regard as 'genuine peers'. Surely we'd have to exclude much of continental Europe, as systems in which most teaching costs are directly paid by the state aren't a reasonable comparison.
sep 3, 2025, 11:57 am • 0 0 • view
I think one problem is that British universities are run by people who regard their peers as one another, regardless of what type of institution they are.
sep 3, 2025, 11:59 am • 3 0 • view
Now I'm wondering what the ideal policy solution is here
sep 3, 2025, 12:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Commit to either funding unis out of general taxation again (like large parts of Europe), perhaps with actual, unintimidating 'top-up' fee amounts (like 1998), or just fully commit to a market-system with uncapped numbers and fees.
sep 3, 2025, 1:41 pm • 1 0 • view
The half-way approach clearly doesn't work. Remember, the £9k fee cap was envisioned by ministers as hopefully ushering a range of institutional fee amounts. That never happened, everyone went to the maximum allowed on day one.
sep 3, 2025, 1:41 pm • 0 0 • view
I would struggle to see evidence that the average university elsewhere in the UK is better managed than the average English uni.
sep 3, 2025, 12:04 pm • 1 0 • view
That's a fair point. I wonder if part of the problem is that we decided to expand universities on the basis that everyone should have the full 3-year research-led experience, instead of offering a broader range of learning modes for different kinds of students as is common elsewhere.
sep 3, 2025, 12:11 pm • 1 0 • view