THE economic, social, and public advantages provided by universities are “threatened by the financial crisis” in higher education, the Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, has warned.
Contributing to a two-hour debate on the topic within the House of Lords last week, Dr Wilcox said that, in his diocese, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University “support greater than 19,500 jobs and generate greater than £1 billion annually for the local economy. What is true in Sheffield is true across the country: universities are generally hugely helpful to the communities inside which they’re situated.”
The Church of England believed that higher education should serve the common good, he said. The universities mentioned did this in quite a lot of ways, including private investment, and volunteer and work placements across health, social care, the law, and other areas.
“Civic activities equivalent to these are seriously threatened by the financial crisis in HE and the right storm currently battering the sector.
“In the past few years, . . . there was a drastic drop in EU students while international students from further afield are facing visa restrictions. UK students have been poorly placed to deal with the cost-of-living crisis, and I gather that a lower birth rate within the early 2000s implies that there are reduced numbers of young people within the cohort currently in sixth-form and FE colleges.
“As a result, there was increased competition between institutions for a similar smaller pool of scholars, and the pinch has been felt most keenly by the smallest of our HE institutions.”
Dr Wilcox pointed to the Cathedrals Group of universities for example: “These 14 institutions make higher education disproportionately available to under-served communities, equivalent to rural and coastal areas. They typically have the next proportion of scholars who progress to school after they are older and who’re the primary of their family to make that step.”
The debate was brought by the crossbench Lord Krebs, who said in his introduction that “we should always be in little doubt that our universities are facing a funding crisis.”
He continued: “In its insight briefing of May this yr, the OfS [Office for Students] notes that 74 of England’s universities will run a deficit in 2024-25 and that the forecasts of recovery in future years made by universities are based on overly optimistic assumptions, in order that by 2026-27 nearly two-thirds are prone to be in deficit.”
The reasons were well-known, he said: the scholar fee had not increased since 2016; “most if not all universities have turn out to be depending on income from overseas students to subsidise the remainder of their activities”; and overseas applicants for taught Master’s courses had dropped after changes within the visa rules prevented their bringing families with them.
The Government should, he argued, consider short-term solutions, but “there’s a longer-term query: is the university sector as a complete fit for purpose? Could the crisis be changed into a chance to rethink the scale, shape, and role of the university sector?”
Responding to the talk, the Education Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern said that the Government had acted quickly to handle the crisis, including “refocusing” the Office for Students on the difficulty of monetary sustainability, and bringing in its interim chair. She continued: “We have already began reviewing options to deliver a more robust higher-education sector. It will take a while to get right, but I don’t imagine that it is going to take so long as some people fear.
“We are determined that the higher-education funding system delivers for our economy, for universities, and for college kids.”
She agreed with arguments in regards to the advantages of universities: “Why accomplish that many individuals . . . campaign for university campuses of their constituencies? It is because they understand the economic, social, and cultural power they’ll bring to the communities that they represent.”
