16th March 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Hundreds of Oxbridge academics have written to the government to express their concerns over the recent changes to university funding in the UK. An article on the BBC website explains that many academics feel that there is too little information about the new system, and that they are ‘flying blind’ in trying to estimate the demand for each course, and hence the amount of funding available for each course.
Tuition fees have risen from £3,000 to between £6,000 and £9,000. The intention of this change was to reduce public spending on university funding, and force universities to think about the value of a graduate’s degree, rather than providing courses that offer no real value after a student has left university. However, regardless of whether the change is a good strategy, the criticism is that the government has not adequately prepared universities for the impact of these changes.
Academics have warned that allowing student demand to determine the provision of courses is an “extremely risky and irresponsible experiment”, and that more research should have been done to identify the long term consequences of the changes, so that universities could choose the right level at which to set their tuition fees. The government had promised to publish the White Paper by the end of March, which would give a more study of the new tuition fee system, and advise how much the fees should be, but this has now been delayed, because the government want to see what level of tuition fees each university will charge. Academics claim that this is putting the cart before the horse, and that they need the information in the White Paper to best make the decisions in front of them.