A Black Day for Higher Education

The parliamentary vote for the tripling of student fees on Thursday, and parallel savage cutting of university funding was a black day for Higher Education and for the country as a whole. It means that many prospective students (especially from poorer backgrounds) will probably not go to university because of the huge debt created (only a small number will be given scholarships). The cut to the teaching budget in the Arts and Humanities from 2012 is effectively 100%, so these areas will only be funded by student fees, and the STEM subjects will also have large cuts. This will affect academic subject departments throughout HE because if they cannot recruit students at the higher fee (because prospective students have been frightened off), they are likely to close down or be reduced in size.
    Clearly some of the right wing commentators would say that a reduction in the size of higher education would be a good thing because they think there are too many students studying given the number of graduate jobs. This is a rather facile argument as all the evidence suggests that UK plc needs more graduates in the future not fewer, therefore putting students off studying seems to be a perverse action. The Coalition's argument that HE has to take it's fair share of the required cuts (because of banker greed) doesn't make much sense given the size of the cuts mentioned above. Another oddity is that of course the loans will still cost the country about the same as the present funding scheme for many years to come (until graduates start to pay back). It is not really about cuts, it is about conservative ideology. A much fairer approach would be to raise income tax to fund what the country needs in HE, school education and NHS. This was the preferred model (until Thatcherism took hold ) in the past, and is much more 'progressive' than the scheme that has been voted in.
    So what can be done in HE about this situation? It is unlikely that HE funding will change until the next election, and even then if Labour get back in, Miliband refused to say that he will scrap the new scheme. I think that the New Universities are at the most risk because more of their students will be put off studying (see research by Leicester University   Fee research and More on this), so this is likely to be where the pressure is greatest. New Universities could ruthlessly reduce costs so that the fee can be set at the lower end of the £6000-£9000 range, but this would be likely to impact on the quality of the student experience which is crucial. The other problem is that having a lower fee will suggest that you have an inferior course (see how this impacted on Leeds Met). So it is likely that New Universities will probably set relatively high fees (to avoid degrading their courses), but will attempt to improve the quality of what is offered and increase their marketing to their poorer students. The positive aspect of all this is that there will be a renewed interest in high quality teaching, something that seems to have been lost in the rush to promote research in New Universities. Of course the main worry is that no one actually knows what new students will do in 2012, so it is very difficult to plan.