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Education United Kingdom

Britain's Bankrupt Universities Are Hunting For Cheaper Models (economist.com) 43

British universities face mounting financial pressures with four in ten institutions running deficits, according to the Office for Students regulator. Half have closed courses to save money, while Durham and Newcastle each shed 200 staff members. Lancaster's cost-saving plan could eliminate one in five academic positions. The crisis, writes Economist, stems from frozen tuition fees for English students, which will rise by only a few percent in August for the first time in eight years.

Britain's Bankrupt Universities Are Hunting For Cheaper Models

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  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @02:14PM (#65527396)
    Page three.
    • Page three.

      Is that where we find the naked campus “administrators” tenured by the dozen? ‘Cause I have an idea as to why costs are so pointlessly high..

      • In California, the number of administrative staff at state-funded colleges has tripled since 1980.

        Some of the increase, but not all, is due to unfunded federal mandates.

  • by shilly ( 142940 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @02:23PM (#65527422)

    I have a friend who worked for Jo Johnson (ex higher ed minister under the Tories) and who was an exuberant backer of tuition fees and student loans. I pointed out to him that the administrative costs and profits of the loans model, plus the timeshifting effects of costs being incurred by unis immediately but revenues taking years to generate, inevitably meant that the system would come under immense financial strain, all for the nominal moral principle of introducing a user-pays element that was clearly done to satisfy nasty old cunts who never went to uni themselves and resented paying into a general taxation pot for anyone else to go. He insisted that the model was sound, and made clear that he thought the Scandi model of just funding three years of tertiary education via general taxation the same way the previous 13 years of education is funded was totally ridiculous.

    Well, I was right, and he was wrong, despite his giant brain. This has been a cluster of massive proportions, and proves that once you break certain types of thing, it's an enormous pain to fix them. And New Labour and the Tories absolutely broke higher ed, and I won't forgive them for that. My son's at Durham, and in common with almost every other British uni, he had virtually no teaching at all in his third term. It's a fucking joke.

    • by kalpol ( 714519 )
      When you say "virtually no teaching", what do you mean? No professors, just teaching assistants? or none at all? If none at all, what did he do? Classes taught by teaching assistants is quite common in the US, even at well-regarded flagship research universities, and especially in the larger lower-level classes. More specialized higher-year classes usually have at least graduate students teaching them, and usually lecturers/professors.
      • by kalpol ( 714519 )
        sigh.....*are* quite common. Interrupted mid-sentence and continued wrongly.
      • by shilly ( 142940 )

        Virtually no teaching = a single lecture and a couple of seminars in the third term, plus a single exam.

    • As the student population grows larger and larger and entrance standards become more and more, shall we say, 'democratic', it becomes difficult to justify funding higher education. Especially when kids that didn't go to uni are effectively subsidising the ones that do. "Oh but electricians will be treated by doctors who studied at university" goes the tired argument - it no longer holds water when you have 50%+ of kids going to university and only a fraction make use of that degree (I mean actually using it
  • by Felix Baum ( 6314928 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @02:32PM (#65527452)
    Two-thirds of UK universities have more administrators than faculty. This is why one in five academic positions is now being threatened. We could have seen this coming, 2017 article https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
    • Bloated administration departments are a problem everywhere.

      Once administration is put in control the first thing they always do is expand the administration department.
  • by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @02:33PM (#65527454) Homepage
    Maybe post secondary institutes wouldn't be broke, if they focused on education, and useful education. What's useful? Well, perhaps instead of having programs like "The music of Taylor Swift", "Feminism theory", "Women's Studies", "Understanding the Simpsons", and so on, you could just drop them and focus on core programs like Engineering, Maths, the Sciences, and then have on the side programs like History, ART, Philosophy, and make sure the bulk of your funding is come from the STEM programs.

    If that's not the path you want to take, maybe get rid of the pointless "extras", for instance why did my university have multiple decorative atriums? Why did the school have expensive art work, and art installations? Perhaps cutting back on the frill, would help, I never used any of the "atriums", as a "hangout", which is how they were sold to the students, and every year there seemed to be some new gimmick.

    Should we talk about the grotesque waste in software licenses? Every computer had Windows, and Office, why? Now, if those were free, fine, but were they? I don't know what bulk pricing at that scale might be, but I doubt it was on par with Fedora and LibreOffice. I understand that some specialized software, like AutoCAD, needs Windows, but the vast majority can go free. Even specialized software like MATLAB, just use Octave, and down the stack you go. I took Engineering, the list of software they wanted me to use that was closed source junk, a kilometre long, the number of titles I replaced with Open Source, almost all of them, I think, from memory, there were only two programs I couldn't swap.

    Should we talk about Student Services? I know some services are required, but Native Service, Black Service, Gay Service, Lesbian Service, Pride Service, Better not be White Service, X Service, could we not reduce those into one or two, and group them under Accessibility? I worked in the Accessibility office one summer, I got dismissed, why? I completed summer worth of work in 2-day. 12-weeks of work, in 2-days, ya, they weren't busy.

    Maybe, we could stop supplementing the yearly budget using immigration? In Ontario, Canada, they cut the number of international students, and now schools are going broke. What did you think was going to happen? Part of the model relied on robbing internation students, to fund all the frill and nonsense, that wasn't core education? Lets go with a combination of all of these, and more, and focus on education, and maybe then, we don't need mass layoffs.
    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      The large university near me has a 10-1 staff to faculty ratio. Not administrators, or academic staff. Janitors, groundskeepers, support, librarians, maintenance workers, aides to the higher-ups, etc.. This seems a bit excessive.

      Fun story. I have friends who work for a smaller, though still quite big, local university. When a new president came on board, his wife was dismayed that he only had one personal aide and a secretary, and she didn't get one (at the larger university, the president has something li

      • I believe your account 100%. In my first year of university I had an issue, doesn't matter what it was. For weeks, I spent time trying to contact people in Student Services, to help. Always got a run around and nothing happened. The answer was: The next person will be able to fix this, every time, yada, yada, yada.

        After ~5 weeks, I got pissed off, and walked to the office of the assistant dean, the second or third person in charge. I didn't schedule an appointment, I didn't email anyone, I just walk
    • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @03:11PM (#65527534) Homepage

      Most of your post is repeating false propaganda. While classes like "The Music of Taylor Swift" etc do exist, they are the equivalent of the inter mural sports program - they cost very little money, have small classes, and are add-ons that attract attention and students rather than loss leaders. What you call the 'side programs' do wonders to educate the students again at low cost. They do not cost the university money.

      The STEM classes are the expensive ones that many people join and then quit the program. Everyone and their uncle wants to be one of the 'smart, valuable students', but most don't have what it takes. All those people trying to make the cut but failing cost the university far more money for far less return.

      The atriums etc that you dislike, they are usually gifted by the wealthy. People give 50 million and demand an atrium to have their name.

      Similarly, the licensed software is often gifted by the corps. They want people to learn how to use their license stuff, not the free-ware which is just as/almost as good.

      There is no "better not be white service", and your inclusion of that indicates that you are prejudiced. You and the snide comments you make are why we need those services. Yes, these things are expensive. The easiest way to deal with that cost is to just kick anyone out that thinks like you. Stop coddling racist and prejudiced shmucks rather than paying for therapy for everyone else.

      The real costs problems tend to be 1) administrative, 2) failed students, 3) healthcare is growing.

      • I never made a racist statement because I'm not racist, my point was simply to collapse and consolidate the N services into a few or one. The Accessibility Service department, was just a waste of resources. People needed help, but it was over funded and overstaffed, and still is. I wasn't joking about completing 12-weeks of work in 2-days.

        Healthcare was a shit show at the school. The school required you to have insurance, and if you didn't have private insurance, you had to buy the school's insurance.
      • I'd add that higher education is where corporations outsourced their training programs to, which is why people don't get out of uni with an education, but with a training.

        I saw this on myself: from the 1st year it was always "in preparation for your future job" . No, fuck you, I want to learn stuff, and gain critical thinking, not become a trained monkey for corpos.
        I am a monkey now though.

    • Maybe post secondary institutes wouldn't be broke, if they focused on education

      Actually, focusing on sports is more profitable.

      The classes are a money sink. Why have them at all?

  • UK here. When I went to uni in 2005, it was £1300 a year (I did four years), when I did my masters in 2009 it was £3000. My younger brother started his degree in 2010 and it was £9000 a year. Did he get 7x as good an education as me. I DOUBT IT.

    You can always tell whatever the UK equivalent of a boomer is when they talk about 'the grant', where they lived in a crazy fantasy world that existed up to 1998 where the state supported its students. "Oh don't you have the grant" "but you've got t

    • The old fuck over the young. It's an old tale. And the young are so fucking stupid, they don't vote.

      • Vote for who?

        • Better candidates in primaries.

          • by Sique ( 173459 )
            I quote the parent poster: "UK here". The voting system in the UK does not know primaries as the U.S. has. Only the Conservative Party has experimented with open primaries since 2009. The last one was 2019 in the Constituency of Gower. If the parent poster were a resident of Gower by chance, he could not vote in any primaries in the last five years, if not, he probably has never had the chance to vote in any primary ever.

            U.S. defaultism...

        • The lesser evil.

          It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.

          Not voting only leads to the shittier candidate winning by default and the slightly better candidate ignoring you since you're not a voter. The loser's faction will move to the middle since that's where the people who actually vote seem to be. The winner's faction will push further toward their side, since they can afford to. Democracy takes a long time, but look what the conservatives have accomplished by sticking together and voting, year afte

          • by spitzak ( 4019 )

            Unfortunately it does not look like "the loser's faction will move to the middle". Witness what Democrats are getting the biggest buzz. It is obvious that extremism on one side makes the other side say "hey we can be just as extreme in the opposite direction!". This is despite the fact that the stupidest person working for either party knows that if they just put out a MODERATE candidate that they would wipe the floor with the opponent.

            I voted against Trump. But I am seriously afraid what we are going to ge

      • No, in general, they don't.. The old tend to try and look out for the young, and help where they can.. That's been my experience anyway..

        • Not when it comes to politics.
          They'll help out when needed, but voting for the interests of the young, potentially against theirs, that ain't happening, and we have the entire world to prove that.
          To prove my point: has there been a US GenX president?

    • https://rugbyoldbloke.wordpres... [wordpress.com]

      Never ever forgive.

    • by job0 ( 134689 )
      you do realise that the government was also paying the universities to teach you. So while you paid 1700 the tax payer paid the rest.
  • Wow, who could have predicted that trebling fees back in 2012 [wikipedia.org] would cause a problem?

    • ??

      I think you're missing something. That caused a problem for the students. What caused a problem for the universities was that the newly trebled fees were meant to cover the entire course. Then the fees stayed the same through Brexit and Trussnomics, leaving the universities with very little money.

  • by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Thursday July 17, 2025 @03:23PM (#65527558)

    Being a graduate is now of little real world use, but has become a positional good which employers use to reduce the number of applicants to a reasonable amount. So more and more kids are taking Masters, for the same reason. This is a self destructive arms race that merely advantages those employed in the tertiary education sector. Stop it now - with a 25% cut in the number of undergraduate loans available, with the cuts focused towards those subjects that have graduates earning less 20 years down the line.

  • lectures via internet and ai ... oh wait ...
  • They can go to the US student loan system

  • The courses used to be fully funded by a grant here in the UK. All you needed was to have the academic credentials to get in, and that was the tough part. About 15% of people went on to higher education (in the early 80s); the theory was that over your working life, you'd more than repay to the government in taxes what was spent on your training for your reasonably "high flying" job. Which was fairly true.
    The wonderful thing about that was that selection was entirely on how academically competent you we

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