ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

MPs to probe university finances ahead of spending review

<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="standfirst">Education committee announces investigation into state of funding in the sector and its impact on staff and students
March 14, 2025
Source: iStock/DenKuvaiev

Funding issues in the UK higher education sector are set to be examined by MPs amid widespread concern about redundancies and course closures.

The House of Commons Education Committee has announced a ¡°deep dive¡± into the state of university finances, with an evidence session set to take place on 8 April.

It comes ahead of the government¡¯s June multi-year spending review in which ministers are under pressure to find ways of getting more funding to the sector, including by indexing English tuition fees to inflation, which would take them above ?10,000 in two years.

Chair Helen Hayes said the evidence session was called because ¡°the UK¡¯s higher education sector is in trouble¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

¡°Dozens of universities are making redundancies and cuts to courses, trying to stay afloat amid uncertainty over where their money is coming from,¡± she added.

The session will be the first major intervention the committee has made in the higher education sector since last year¡¯s election.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

Hayes, the Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood who was elected chair last September, has so far focused mostly on schools and early years education in her time in the role.

¡°The education committee will look under the bonnet at what is going on,¡± she said, adding that it ¡°will examine the perfect storm bearing down on institutions, including fluctuations in domestic and international student numbers, pension contributions, and the rate of tuition fees¡±.

¡°We will also look at the role of research funding in supporting higher education and the distribution of financial challenges across different higher education institutions,¡± Hayes added.

Universities have been plunged into financial difficulties after years of frozen fees, with recent declines in international student revenue restricting their ability to cross-subsidise.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

Rising costs including the coming National Insurance rise and inflationary pressures have exacerbated the issues and led to institutions cutting hundreds of jobs.

Hayes said that the committee will ¡°investigate what this all means for students and staff ¨C the people at the centre of the higher education sector ¨C including the possible impact of funding issues on student experience, quality of courses, pastoral care, and academics¡¯ pay and conditions¡±.

She said MPs wanted to understand ¡°what protections are there for students ¨C who are taking on significant levels of debt and facing cost-of-living pressures ¨C if courses close, lecturers leave, or if we reach a stage where universities close or merge¡±.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com

Register to continue

Why register?

  • Registration is free and only takes a moment
  • Once registered, you can read 3 articles a month
  • Sign up for our newsletter
Register
Please Login or Register to read this article.
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Related articles
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Reader's comments (3)
Too late, buttheads. I am leaving my chair and saying farewell.
Well it is rather too little and too late. The issue has been offloaded to the Commons Committees and they will have to look at a lot of data and interview a lot of people and, eventually, issue a report that might or might not influence government policy. Meanwhile, it seems, Vlad Putin is poised across the channel ready to invade at any moment and all we have are a few broomsticks for guns. Seriously, no public resource is going to be invested in the HE system, which prides itself on its independence from government and its prerogative to fund eye watering salaries for senior staff (plus generous expense schemes). For mist people, for most voters, rightly or wrongly, higher education is a side show, a lower priority than the International Aid budget
new
Dear MPs, Thankyou for noticing at last! Your 'deep dive evidence session' is scheduled for 8 April 2025. It's hard to express the extent to which this is too late. Job losses are coming thick and fast every week, and it is safe to predict that many more highly skilled, highly educated and highly experienced professionals will have been made redundant between now and 8 April, their unique skills and expertise lost to the UK forever. It's been really obvious to rank-and-file university staff, and anyone else who has been paying attention, since at the very least 2023 if not before, that our sector is in a catastrophic crisis (see timeline of job losses at: https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/). For decades before that, our pay and conditions were in decline, our expertise, years of further study, hard work, commitment to our students, loyalty and goodwill all undervalued and underrewarded. We last had a real pay rise in 2006, the year some of our students were born; we were regularly going on strike about this and so much else for the best part of half a decade between 2018 and 2023, but nobody much noticed except to blame us. Now outstanding colleagues are leaving in droves. By this point we scarcely care whether it was governments or senior managers who failed us and our students more. The plain fact is that the sector to which we have given our working lives, and which is vital to the future of the young people of this country, is in free fall, and this happened on your watch. If you did not do anything to try to stop this disaster, you will not be getting our votes at the next general election. Thankyou and goodbye. Yours sincerely, UK university staff
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Sponsored
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Featured jobs
ADVERTISEMENT