Compare our total spending on HE as a %age of GDP to that of any of our G8 competitors. Hell, compare it to the OECD average - we spend less.
Meanwhile, student numbers have risen, while per-capita spending has declined in equal measure. Teaching in many universities survives only due to the numbers of overseas MSc students; this year, my School had an undergraduate intake of 326 students, predominantly from the UK, and a taught postgrad intake of 453, overwhelmingly from overseas (mostly China, India and Saudi Arabia).
We're still punching above our weight on the research front, and research in UK HE is considered to be amongst the most efficient in the world in terms of return on investment. UK HE delivers sustainable value to the UK economy; we can't survive as a pure service economy, and manufacturing has been in decline for decades.
So yes, the sensible approach would be to keep funding HE at its current level rather than cutting it by anywhere between 25% and 40% (if we're lucky. The *preferred* approach would be to do as our competitors are doing, and increase HE funding; if the plan it to eliminate the deficit by growing the economy, this is a sensible way of doing so.
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-10-12 08:20 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, student numbers have risen, while per-capita spending has declined in equal measure. Teaching in many universities survives only due to the numbers of overseas MSc students; this year, my School had an undergraduate intake of 326 students, predominantly from the UK, and a taught postgrad intake of 453, overwhelmingly from overseas (mostly China, India and Saudi Arabia).
We're still punching above our weight on the research front, and research in UK HE is considered to be amongst the most efficient in the world in terms of return on investment. UK HE delivers sustainable value to the UK economy; we can't survive as a pure service economy, and manufacturing has been in decline for decades.
So yes, the sensible approach would be to keep funding HE at its current level rather than cutting it by anywhere between 25% and 40% (if we're lucky. The *preferred* approach would be to do as our competitors are doing, and increase HE funding; if the plan it to eliminate the deficit by growing the economy, this is a sensible way of doing so.