Cardiff University, which has a £30 million hole in its budget as is cutting jobs and courses
Back in the summer of 2023 I wrote a post on the developing financial crisis in higher education. Somewhat naively I assumed that because the current trajectory was so clearly unsustainable that a prospective Labour government would have to intervene quickly to stop things getting worse.
They were and are aware of the problem. “University insolvencies” appeared on Sue Gray’s pre-election “shit list” as one of the six worst problems about to be bequeathed to the new government (none of which have been solved).
But Gray is long gone and so far all the government has done is increase university fees by inflation for one year. Which would have been more useful if it hadn’t been immediately eaten up by the rise in employer national insurance contributions.
Unfortunately for universities the “shit list” turned out to be a lot longer than Labour had anticipated and there are more pressing priorities. It doesn’t help that the higher education sector has so few friends these days. Saving universities isn’t high on the list of public concerns and no opposition party is keen to press the issue. Indeed the Conservatives and Reform are happy to continue using HE as a rhetorical punchbag.
In the absence of a strategy Labour figures are starting to join in, with a particular focus on Vice-Chancellor pay. One anonymous “Whitehall source”, in a triumph of cliché, told the Times that:
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