morungos

The Browne review is now in, followed closely by the Comprehensive Spending Review, and a clearer picture of the future of Higher Education in the UK is emerging.

I say "clearer" because almost all these reviews touch on is funding. Very little has been said on academic structures, although there are signs of some rationalization of governmental and funding bodies. Whether anything else will change, for instance, proposed two-year degrees. remains unclear at this stage.

But the reality is: higher education has taken by far the biggest proportionate cut of government funding of any sector in the UK. It's massive. It's a cut of £2.9 billion, around 40% of the entire higher education budget.

Browne's proposal is essentially to make up this shortfall by getting students to pay the most significant part of their tuition costs. Actually, his reasoning isn't that they are making up a shortfall, but that it is right students pay the bulk of the costs. This is more in line with other countries around the world, although a number of other European nations (including Scotland) have so far continued to provide funding through government. Browne's proposal, with the Comprehensive Spending Review, has taken 40% of government funding over the next four years. It is entirely likely that this £2.9 billion is transitional, and that more will be cut later - Browne clearly anticipated a cut closer to 80% of government funding.

The funding is not cut uniformly. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics - the STEM subjects - are protected somewhat, and in the long run it looks likely that no funding will be provided by the government for other teaching areas.

To replace this funding, it is likely that the fees paid by students will be allowed to rise considerably. Nobody knows quite how much yet, but it won't be unlimited, and the noises are that the government would like to attach strings so that higher fee rates have demonstrable value for students.

This is for teaching. The Comprehensive Spending Review has frozen research budgets, but there is as yet no statement on whether this will be distributed evenly across the research councils. It is possible that again the research councils for STEM subjects get disproportionate treatment.

If this sounds gloomy, it could be. However, there are a few interesting signs. The one I'll look at in this posting is simply this: teaching will become a first-class citizen.

For many years in higher education, teaching has been less important than research. Teaching, if you like, has been a task you had to do, but there was little merit attached to it. Promotions were rarely based on teaching excellence. I have seen interview panels appoint people who were less able at teaching because they showed more research promise. That will very likely change.

The Russell Group - the research elite institutions - campaigned hard for the additional funding that raised fees would provide. In a way, everyone needed the money, as it was clear there were going to be significant cuts even under the previous administration. However, the Russell Group is at heart a research body, not a teaching body. It does do very good teaching, don't get me wrong - and these institutions tended to be well-funded and have very good staff-student ratios, but it's reason for being was as a research body.

So let's look at what a more market-like environment might bring. There are several things that an institution can use to bring in students:

1. lower fees
2. better reputation
3. better teaching

The Russell Group is clearly not going to want lower fees, so it has to work with its reputation and its teaching. The government's statements that high fees will need to demonstrate value limits the use of reputation alone. So, the Russell Group - which has previously been essentially a research grouping - will have to campaign on the basis of its teaching excellence. This could be a challenge, as the reality is, there is not a huge gap between the quality of teaching between the Russell Group institutions and anywhere else, not the kind of gap that would make for a very significant fee differential.

Institutions which don't have reputation can focus either on teaching or on fees. It appears to be possible, within the framework of the Browne review, for a modern former polytechnic to charge more than a Russell Group institution, if it could show clearly excellent teaching. In certain areas, especially vocational ones (many of which, after all, are in the priority subjects) this is entirely possible.

It is true that today, the Russell Group and similar institutions need higher fees to deliver what they do - after all they have more staff per student. Oxford spent 2.5 times more per student than one institution I worked at. Did it really deliver 2.5 times the learning experience? In a competitive situation, they need to show that this is real value. This needs to be an affordable and visible difference. I'll be honest: there is a difference, but whether it would make it worth paying £12000 rather than £5000, I very much doubt. After all, this is an additional £20000 of debt to be paid off, with interest, and the difference in employability between the two institutions is essentially zero. The real winners could be the 1994 Group - good institutions, not as research-oriented as the Russell Group, but without the dependence on a very high staff-student ratio. Their costs are lower, and their teaching quality very close to that of the Russell Group. They have also invested in teaching improvement -- a very useful base if funding becomes more dependent on teaching factors. The Russell Group institutions depend very largely on their high staff-student ratios for teaching performance, and this may just make their costs prohibitive -- especially in Browne's "diminishing returns" model of fee income above £7000.

So, a market will be bring significant changes, and if I was running a Russell Group university, I would be having a few sleepless nights. The future of higher education is going to change very significantly, and it is not yet clear what it will look like. I'll post about that in the days to come.