University finances and the elephant in the senior common room

The marketisation of higher education, like the marketisation of other public services, has been an abject failure, writes Avi Shankar

One issue that you didn’t cover in your editorial (The Guardian view on campus discontent: listen to those on the frontline, 22 October) is that undergraduate tuition fees are applied at the same rate regardless of the degree studied, the “prestige” of the institution, or the implications for students’ later employability.

When tuition fees were raised in 2012, the government said universities could charge up to £9,000. They naively assumed a market would emerge, with different universities and different courses charging different amounts. But it never did. The entire sector, bar a few institutions, went all-in and charged the full amount.

The elephant in the senior common room is that degrees in the arts, humanities or social sciences are far cheaper to deliver than science, engineering or medical degrees. Ironically then, students with poorer employability outcomes are subsidising those with better ones.

Of course, this is all part of successive governments’ “nudging” of young people towards Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), while some politicians, such as Kemi Badenoch, would like to axe the very degrees that subsidise those they want to encourage.

University finances are in a perilous state. Both research and undergraduate teaching lose universities money. The only way they have managed to vaguely balance their books is through postgraduate taught degrees targeted at overseas students paying high fees.

It is even more ironic that this government wants to tax the income from overseas students, while previous governments were so hostile towards these students who, in effect, subsidise our own students. The marketisation of higher education, like the marketisation of other public services, has proved to be an abject failure of political ideology.

Cover photo:  ‘Degrees in the arts, humanities or social sciences are far cheaper to deliver than science, engineering or medical degrees.’ Photograph: monkeybusinessimages/Getty Images/iStockphoto