GRANT LETTER IS ‘REARRANGING THE DECKCHAIRS’ SAYS NUS

The National Union of Students (NUS) has today said that small improvements to the higher education funding system announced in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ministers’ letter to the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) do not solve the wider problems created by government changes to how universities are funded.

The letter does nothing to redress the shifting of the burden of paying for education from the state to the individual, attempts to impose a market on the sector, or to tackle a crisis in post-graduate funding, but does include some positives including the effective creation of up to 5,000 more places for students and a partial reintroduction of leeway for universities that over-recruit*.

Liam Burns NUS President, said:

“The introduction of £9,000 per year tuition fees, the imposition on an artificial market for students, cuts to central teaching grants and constant tinkering have left the entire higher education sector in turmoil.

“That the government is making more places available than they previously promised and are going some way to reintroduce leeway for universities that accidentally over-recruit is to be welcomed but this is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic rather than fixing problems of government’s own making.

“The government scrapped increases in student places and are now reintroducing some of those, and they scrapped flexibility in recruitment and are reintroducing it to address problems created by their core and margin model which saw around 50,000 places left unfilled in 2012.”

*Previously universities were given 5% leeway if they recruited more students that HEFCE had allocated them before they received fines. However, this leeway was then removed completely meaning universities were likely to end up with unfilled places as they attempted to avoid financial penalties. The new margin for error is 3%.