The funding and administration of UK universities

Factual Questions
1

How do universities like Oxford and Cambridge get their funding, and how are they run? How are the individual colleges at each university run?

In the US, there are public, private, and religious schools. All of the get funded by tuition, contributions, patents, copyrights, and funding of programs by the government. In addition, public universities get funding from the government, and religious universities get funding from the religious bodies.

Are there public universities in the UK? Are they funded by the government?

2

The great bulk of UK universities are organised as not-for-profit bodies with charitable status. Some of these were founded by private benefactors or developed out of religious institutions, some were founded by public bodies, but their organisation and funding is the same, regardless of how they were founded. They get some direct grants from the government to fund teaching and research. This accounts for about 25% of their income but overall, universities’ largest single source of income is tuition fees (about 45%). Most EU-resident students in turn have their tuition fees covered by government loans, or by direct government grant. Most UK universities have little or no endowment income. They solicit benefactions and donations from private individuals, business and charities; these are mostly not used to build up an endowment, but are committed to fund various activities as they are received. They raise money by doing research for pay, or by exploiting intellectual property developed by self-funded research.

There are in addition a handful of private for-profit universities; they do not receive any direct government grants, but I believe their students can get student loans, etc, on the same terms as those attending other universities.

3

When I was young, most english students I knew went to university funded by their “grant”, which I think I remember came through their local council, and I guess would have depended on their parents income.

I never met anybody rich enough to be self - funded, but I did meet a few who got sports scholorships. The sports scholorships enabled them to go to Oxford: I don’t know what the selection criteria would have been otherwise, (But I didn’t get the impression it was anything magic, or that only kids from Eton got in.)

Grants are being phased out now, and it’s all loans I think.

4

My oldest son starts uni in less than a month, so we’re going through the funding process right now. It’s changed a lot since my day 91-94.

I didn’t have to pay for tuition and I got a grant from my local council to cover living costs. In 1991 the grant was frozen and they introduced ‘top up’ loans. These were repayable after graduation, but could be deferred if you earned less than a % of the national average. The interest rate was linked to inflation so you only ever paid back the same amount in real terms.

Every year the grant became worth less in purchasing terms and the size of the ‘top up’ loan increased. Until eventually the grant was abolished and the loan became the only source of maintenance.

Then they introduced tuition fees that could also be covered via a loan. These started out small, about £1000 but have quickly risen to the current £9250.

At some point the Student Loans Company was privatised and the interest rate has switched to a commercial rate rather than just being index linked.

So my son is going to be borrowing about £17000 a year for 3 years, on which he will be charged real interest. Unless Labour manage to get in and keep their promise to write it all off.

5

Scottish universities have very low costs. Historically Scots universities were very accessible to the poor, which led to the well-deserved Scottish reputation for intelligence and research. And they were some of the oldest in the world, although long after Italy of course, where they started.

In this more democratic era though, the universities are in deficit * and the poor unwelcomed.

You can be charged up to £1,820 per year for tuition. The Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) will pay this in full if you are eligible. You must reapply to SAAS every year of your course.

  • You may note that the Scottish Sunday Herald, university-goers to a woman, is far too stupid to date its articles. The sure sign of a crap website.
6

When I was a lad, a university education was an option for only about 10% of school leavers. The UK government paid the university fees and also provided a maintenance grant to live on.

That was a generation ago, and it was a system that was appropriate for an industrialised economy with a large working class that were trained for various trades; along with a somewhat smaller professional and technical class that needed a more academic education provided by a university.

Times have changed and so has the character of the economy. There has been a large scale de-industrialisation. Those jobs have moved abroad. By far the greatest percentage of the workforce is now employed in the service sector which is thought to require the critical and analytical skills best taught by a university education.

Successive governments followed a policy of greatly expanding university education and paying for this by imposing fees and loans on students. My nephew is about to start university and I can see him racking up a bill of £60,000 after three years. The worry is that some students will never pay off their debts.

This is a big issue in the UK.

At least there is some kind of uniformity, UK universities all have the same maximum annual fee ($11,370) they can charge students with UK or the nationality of one of the other 27 nations in the EU (though, no doubt, that obligation will change with Brexit.) That maximum figure applies also to prestigious universities like Oxford and Cambridge.

For students from outside the EU, fees are driven by market demand, the universities charge whatever they can get away with.

Many other countries in the EU have a system where the government finances university education or they charge low fees, but of course, you have to understand the language. They see it as an investment in the country that should be borne collectively, which seems sensible to me.

Degrees are being turned into little more than job hunting licenses for the aspiring middle classes, rather than any of that old stuff about education and research.:dubious:

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have different arrangements because education policy is devolved to their government and assembly. None of them have gone down exactly the same path as England. That is probably a good thing.

It is quite common to see lots of 18year olds doing light weight arts degrees and spending three years partying only to find that there is no glorious future waiting for them in the digital economy.

7

Tuition fees provide virtually no actual funding. They’re mostly paid through student loans, and student loans are backed by the government. They’re also generally not paid back. Those to EU students are almost never paid back, and no enforcement mechanism is in place to make them pay it back.

Scottish universities have, or at least had a couple of years ago, fee-free education for all Scottish and EU citizens. Not people from the rest of the UK, though.

As far as I can tell the entire system is a dodge whereby the government pisses away money giving people media studies degrees because it keeps them off the dole for a couple of years, and after wasting a few years and making themselves debt slaves for the rest of their lives the idiot children of the rich go to do jobs a trained monkey could do which don’t require degrees at all, but where the parasitic mangerial class like to know they aren’t hiring poor people.

8

The funding mix indeed varies, but the real difference among different categories of colleges and universities in the US is in how they are governed. Private universities are run by private non-profit foundations or for-profit companies, and religious universities are governed by the administrative structure of the church. The administration of a public university is generally appointed by or otherwise somehow responsive to a governmental body, typically a state legislature, with state officials comprising some or all of the board of trustees.

9

Most universities also have bursaries and scholarships, which are granted to students who are very bright, very poor, or preferably both. Some of them have restrictive criteria such as those for single parents etc.

10

The headline figure is £33billion

I think they get about £5billion of this is from overseas students and are rather nervous about government policy that includes these high paying students in the great British immigration debate.

UK universities get much of their funding from the government, either directly or through the underwriting of student loans to cover fees. Though that is not something this document likes to suggest. They get a lot of research funding from big charities and foundations.

It is a big business but publicly owned. There are very few private universities. I don’t think there are any religious universities.

11

Leeds Trinity is described as a Catholic university, as is St. Mary’s Twickenham (whose disturbing motto is “Show Thyself a Mother”). Not sure if that means that they’re currently Church-run, though, like it would in the US.

12

How are the unis administered? Do they have boards and chairpeople, or chancellors, or presidents?

13

Typically they have elaborate constitutions, and are equipped with:

(a) A Chancellor, who is a ceremonial head with no function in the administration of the university, but who is expected to add lustre to it by his fame, and who may be expected to assist with fundraising efforts, or who may even be a substantial donor. Sometimes it’s a minor royal; Princess Anne is Chancellor of several universities. Sometimes it’s a celebrity; the actor Jeremy Irons is chancellor of Bath Spa University (which has a particular strength in the creative arts).

(b) A ceremonial assembly comprising all the graduates of the university, or all the Masters, with a name like “convocation” or “congregation”. It too has little function in running the university, although it may elect or confirm the Chancellor. It usually elects some members to the Council of the University (see below).

(c) A Vice-Chancellor, who is the chief executive and the senior academic in the university. In Scotland he’s often called the Principal.

(d) In some cases, a Visitor who is an independent outsider who arbitrates disputes that can’t be resolved within the University. The visitor’s position is usually held ex officio; i.e. you don’t get to be visitor because they admire your wisdom, but because you are the Queen, the Lord Chancellor, the Bishop of Durham.

(e) An executive body called a Board, Council, Court or similar which consists of academics, often student representatives, sometimes civic representatives, maybe nominees of a bishop or a religious order if the university is a religious university. It will be dominated by academics, and there’ll be an election/nominations system to ensure that the academic representatives are drawn from across the range of factulties/schools/departments into which the university is divided. This is a very significant body, meeting regularly. The Vice-Chancellor reports to it. They hire and fire the Vice-Chancellor and other executives, and they control finances. In the older Scottish universities, this body (called a “Court”) also includes, and is chaired by, a Rector, who is directly elected by the students of the University. The Rector is usually from outside the university and is often a politician or a celebrity; Stephen Fry, for instance, has been Rector of the University of Dundee, while the current Aberdeen Rector is a senior figure in the Scottish Green Party.

(f) A larger body with a title like “Senate” which is dominated by academics and which has final responsibility for academic matters. Professors of the University may be appointed or confirmed by the Senate, which also approves the awarding of degrees. It approves the establishment of degrees and degree course, oversees the conduct of examinations, etc. It usually nominates some of the members of the Council.

Nomenclature is very variable, so e.g. the “Council” in one university may be a small executive body, but in another could be one of the larger assemblies.

14

There is also a Students Union at each university, which is financed through membership subscriptions, in the past, the membership fee was automatically added when fees were paid. I am not sure what the arrangement is now. The Students Union usually has a few permanent employees and runs a lot of the social spaces on a university campus which includes lots of bars and organising entertainment such as concerts. Student Unions have elections and are run by committees and there is an awful lot of student politics involved and a great deal of campaigning and speech making. The subject may well be what kind of beer to serve in the bar or whether to write a stern letter to the Prime Minister saying the students disapprove of some policy, or voting on disputes between various clubs, nonetheless, it is an opportunity for aspiring politicians to get some practice campaigning, debating and public speaking.:smiley:

15

Membership of the union also comes with benefits like discounts at local stores, but the main benefit is cheap beer at “The Union”.