English Universities in Crisis

Recent policies have replaced direct government funding for teaching with fees paid by students. As well as saddling graduates with enormous debt, satisfaction rates are low, a high proportion of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and public debt from unpaid loans is rocketing.

This timely and challenging analysis combines theoretical and data analysis and insights gained from running a university, to give robust new policy proposals: lower fees; reintroduce maintenance awards; impose student number caps; maintain taxpayer funding; cancel the TEF; re-build the external examiner system; restructure the contingent-repayment loan scheme; and establish different roles for different types of institutions, to encourage excellence and ultimately benefit society.

'Why we should have post results university applications' on Transforming Society
'Universities in crisis: why a cut in tuition fees and longer loan period would make most students worse off' in The Conversation
'Feast and Famine: Re-balancing funding in HE and FE' in FE News
'Augar missed the chance to put English universities’ WP spending to better use' in Times Higher Education

"A robust and astute diagnosis of some of the detrimental effects generated by the fee/loan system of funding introduced in 2012 and the regulatory regime established by the Higher Education and Research Act of 2017... a valuable source of arguments for an informed critique of the proposals that are expected to emerge shortly from the Augar Review of university funding and Dame Shirley Pearce’s independent review of the TEF." Council for the Defence of British Universities

"An eloquent and convincing case that the changes in the funding of higher education since 2010 have taken the English university system in a fundamentally mistaken direction". Alasdair Smith, University of Sussex

“An extremely topical up-to-date analysis of recent Government policies and their effect on the public purse, student finance, student behaviour, the university system and the internal management of universities.. will be invaluable for a wide group of readers, from higher education employees and staff to policy makers, the media and students.” Dame Hon Margaret Hodge MP

"Excellent analysis of how UK university reforms since 2012 have proved dysfunctional because they created too little, not too much, competition, and allowed university managements to divert most of the extra fee funding to their own ends. It offers solutions from the insights of two economists and a former VC." Peter Holmes, University of Sussex

"Convincingly undermines the rationale for the funding regime for English higher education established since 2010 - and it does so strictly on the government’s own terms." Peter Scott, Institute of Education, University College London

Introduction

How Did We Get Here?

A Short Note On: The Case for Free Tuition and the Scottish Approach

Markets Without Competition

Stakeholders and Expenditures

Expanding Numbers and Maintaining Standards

A Short Note On: Setting up the OIA

Widening Participation and Student Finance

A Short Note On: The Open University

A Short Note On: The Case for Career Colleges: The US Model, by Lincoln E. Frank

Adjusting to the Future