Petford: ¡®universities, at the end of the day, are businesses¡¯

UK universities will soon be charging Britons ?20,000 a year as the sector begins to think about home students in the same way that it does?those from overseas, a vice-chancellor has argued.

¡°Some universities in the UK that have a high brand value will be able to charge ?17,000, ?18,000 or ?20,000 a year in the future ¨C I am sure of that,¡± said Nick Petford, vice-chancellor of the University of Northampton, in a Times Higher Education podcast this week.

¡°If you look at international students, that¡¯s been a pretty much unregulated market since we¡¯ve been recruiting overseas students. Universities have always been used to this sort of behaviour.

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¡°The big step change now is thinking about home students in this way.¡±

According to Professor Petford, politicians were ¡°naive¡± to expect different institutions to charge a range of fees when the cap was raised to ?9,000 a year from 2012.

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He argued that it was always likely that they would congregate around a ¡°sweet spot¡± towards the upper end of the scale.

¡°I think that was inevitable,¡± he said. The risk for institutions now, he continued, was that because the cap prevents them from increasing fees in line with inflation, they could soon find themselves short of cash.

¡°It¡¯s quite easy to do a financial forecast which shows that if the cap remains at ?9,000 in the next decade, a number of universities ¨C including ours ¨C could potentially be in financial difficulty. Something has to give at some stage.¡±

But tackling the shortfall will not be easy, Professor Petford said: ¡°The problem is that no political party is going to go into the next election saying: ¡®We¡¯re going to make it more expensive to go to university.¡¯ As a vote winner, it¡¯s just not going to work, is it?¡±

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Hanging tough

Elsewhere in the podcast, Professor Petford spoke candidly about the tough decisions vice-chancellors have to make when restructuring their institutions.

In August 2011, he was accused of ¡°dismissing¡± the work of administrative and support staff after redundancy plans were announced, while earlier this year the Northampton branch of the University and College Union passed a motion of no confidence in a restructuring exercise that it said had caused needless anxiety.

¡°You do have to make difficult decisions as a vice-chancellor because universities, at the end of the day, are businesses,¡± said Professor Petford. The recent increases in energy prices illustrate well the financial battles that institutions have to fight, he continued.

¡°I have just been talking to new staff at the university and one of the questions I like to ask them is: ¡®How much do you think it costs to heat and light a university every year?¡¯

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¡°For one of our size, it is nearly ?2?million ¨C which is going up 10?per cent year on year. Where does that money come from? It doesn¡¯t come from a cheque from the government¡­it ultimately comes from student fees.¡±

The ¡°heady mix of commercialism and marketisation¡± that has taken root in the academy meant that ¡°you do, as a vice-chancellor, have to make quite tough decisions about staffing¡±, he added.

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chris.parr@tsleducation.com