Higher education – who should it serve?

Higher education workers are challenging the current marketised funding model. The University and College Union (UCU), the trade union for lecturers, researchers and other key HE staff, is campaigning under the banner Reclaim Higher Education.

The present system of higher education funding embraced by successive governments is not sustainable, everyone knows that (see Box). Despite the evidence, there’s been a refusal by government to make a decision about any alternative.

Attempts to address the problem are, if anything, compounding the harm. Their focus is profitability and competition. A system which could meet our needs as a society is reduced to a “loss making activity”, in the words of one policy analyst. The sort of higher education that Britain needs is rarely discussed.

The UCU campaign seeks to break the funding impasse. It is essential for workers in the sector and the students they serve. It is also essential for society, because we need higher education for the vital research it carries out, and for educating our young people to serve society’s needs.

Job loss

The current funding model has, the union says, “torn up the higher education sector as we know it and has created a system which is bad for students, staff, universities, and taxpayers alike.” Dozens of universities across Britain are threatening the loss of thousands of jobs and the closure of entire departments.

‘Students are graduating with a lifetime of debt. Yet spending on staff is at a record low…’

Students are graduating with a lifetime of debt. Yet spending on staff is at a record low, workloads and job insecurity are mounting, and financial inequality is growing as institutions are forced to battle for student income. The union calls for a fair funding model and for professional autonomy and respect for staff.

The union is calling for fair and equal pay and an end to exploitative working practices; collaborative approaches to regulation and quality assurance; and meaningful representation for staff on decision-making structures.

Workers have solutions. Specifically, the union wants to see an end to tuition fees in higher education and secure, long-term funding for all subjects and types of higher education institution. It also calls for a fair distribution of students across the sector. Recent polling conducted for UCU by Savanta shows most people think students should pay less towards the cost of higher education (62 per cent) and employers should pay more (53 per cent).

UCU has long argued that employers should pay more to develop the supply of skilled graduates on which they rely. It proposes a new funding model – a business education tax paid by employers.

The union commissioned a research company, London Economics, to evaluate its ideas. Its report, Assessing the costs of removing undergraduate tuition fees across the UK, argues that student fees across Britain could be abolished and replaced by a levy on graduates’ employers or an increase in corporation tax. This would replace the £11 billion in fees paid by each cohort of UK-domiciled students with a corresponding increase in public teaching grants funded by the charge on employers.

A parliamentary research report provides further evidence backing the union’s demands. The higher education sector adds over £70 billion to the UK economy, the report says. Yet it relies on domestic students paying back debt for up to 40 years with the government still making a loss on the loan.

The problem is that employers have no interest in maintaining higher education, or skills training, while they can get educated, trained workers more cheaply through immigration. Coupled with a reliance on overseas students, the HE sector is not serving Britain’s needs.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said, “UCU is calling on all political parties to remove the debt burden from young people accessing education and commit to publicly funding universities. The report from London Economics shows there are clear options for a future government to pay for higher education and that it can do so without burdening individual taxpayers.”

It is positive that the union is starting a much-needed debate about the purpose of .higher education in Britain today. It is great that UCU general secretary Jo Grady unambiguously states that universities are a “public good”. But the campaign’s approach is not ambitious enough.

The UCU’s campaign launch document says, “It’s time to reclaim higher education for the interests of staff and students.” But wider interests are at stake. Higher education is part of Britain’s economy, part of our society. It is not a separate special interest making a claim for privileged treatment.

Skills

Britain needs a greater focus on developing technical skills among the whole population, including apprenticeships. The appliance of science to industrial development is vital to producing new goods.

But that’s not all. Our universities are an essential part of our cultural life: pitting the arts against the sciences is a divisive approach, seeing the sole purpose of higher education to produce student fodder for capital to exploit.

This capitalist approach to higher education is one aspect of the reactionary offensive against Britain, our industry, our culture, and our people. Workers in the sector should look more widely at the value of higher education and talk to their fellow workers about it.

The UCU campaign document claims, “Our sector has been placed at the centre of a divisive culture war.” In truth, some in our universities have aided the reactionary offensive by trying to crush the free exchange of ideas. That has to be honestly addressed sooner rather than later.

The campaign document calls for “fairness” – in pay, in funding and so on. But that’s a disarming approach. Experience should teach us that the obstacle to all progress, including fairness, is capitalism.

A radical change is necessary: workers need to face up to that and to call for it. The debate about the system of funding is much needed, but that debate can and should be extended to include the purpose of higher education.

• Related article: The funding crisis in detail