21st June 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The CBI has advised that weaker universities should be cut, so as not to hinder better institutions. In a report on the BBC website, Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI said that in light of the current spending cuts to reduce the national deficit, ministers should consider closing universities where the cost of the funding exceeds the economic and social value developed in their students.
Mr. Lambert stated that a number of universities were already in serious financial difficulty, and the government has to make a decision whether to bail them out, or close them and face the political ramifications. The consequence of bailing them out would mean spending reduced funding even more thinly, “making our best universities pay the price for the incompetence of the worst.“, Lambert said.
With proposals to increase the current £3,250 cap on university tuition fees, or remove the cap altogether in the government’s attempt to cut £200m from their higher education budget, Mr. Lambert also called in question the efforts to improve access to higher education for students from less privileged backgrounds. He claimed that university tuition should be available to students based on their ability and ambition to pursue it, stating that “Any other approach would be both socially unjust and economically inefficient”