Politics: Shorten Degrees to Cut Fees?

The contact hours involved in most university degrees are so light that many students spend only half a year at university and are taught for such little time that they struggle to see value for money for their tuition fees. That was the opening argument of a report by the centre-right think-tank UK2020 which concluded that university courses should be condensed into two years to remove a third of the financial burden students now face.

The report accused universities of colluding to stifle the changes that were supposed to justify dramatic rises in tuition fees. “When tuition fees nearly trebled from £3,375 to £9,000 in 2012, students were promised by ministers that in return for running up tens of thousands of pounds in debts, the reforms would turn them into powerful consumers,” the report said. “They would be presented with a wide choice of prices, new types of degree and new institutions offering them. Their pressure would drive universities to improve teaching”.

That did not happen. “Universities act as a cartel, virtually all charging the same, stifling new competition and slowing reform,” it said. “They have been helped by flaws in the design of the funding system, weak politicians and the protection of a 200-strong lobby of members of the House of Lords who have ties to universities.”

£1 trillion tab

Former Labour minister Andrew Adonis and Conservative UK2020 founder Owen Paterson agreed in a foreword to the report that attitudes to student debts cut across the political spectrum.

“More recently they have risen back up the political agenda and they burst into the open in the 2017 general election,” they said, referring to Jeremy Corbyn’s controversial pledge to end tuition fees.

“Financial worries should not put young people off going to university but we are concerned that fewer of them will want to do so unless urgent steps are taken to address the levels of debt they are incurring. Under the current system, more and more students will fail to repay and the taxpayer will suffer a growing, unsustainable cost as loans are forecast to rise to £1 trillion in cash terms over the next 30 years.”

Higher education is worth an annual £11bn in UK export earnings, the report noted. The financial burden of rising tuition fees is not being shared by the actual universities, the report said, noting that vice-chancellors now earn an average of £278,000 per year.

“Two-year degrees, which some universities have already shown can be taught within the current annual fee cap, would transform value for money for students and reduce the demands on the taxpayer,” the report concluded.

End of Freshers?

Student interviews quoted in the report carried a consistent complaint that the first year of university is a “backward step” after competitive A-Levels, with timetables of just a handful of hours spread over three days a week and academic years ending as early as March.

In many ways the first year has become sacred as a kind of gap year when young people are given the freedom to just be young people.

The transition involves leaving home, making new friends often for the first time since primary school, embracing some elements of adult life as well as the more hedonistic social life. For many of us it is the best year of our lives. But that still does not justify the £9,000 tuition and maintenance costs.

Removing the first year entirely sounds drastic but the report suggests an opt-in approach as 50% of surveyed students said they were open to the idea of a shorter degree. Surely the best answer would be to charge students for what they get – higher fees for heavy courses at renowned institutions and lower fees for courses with lighter contact time. Right now everyone pays the same extortionate rate and gets what they are given.

by Stewart Vickers

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