Whatever your feelings about David Willets, he has at least realised a simple truth. In the short term, and possibly in the long term also, the cost to the country of having a university system is not reduced by making students pay fees. Most students take out loans that are repaid long-term at low interest rates, and fees simply transfer a part of university costs from one taxpayer ‘pot’ to another1.
Why, then, are Vice-Chancellors so united in demanding that fees be increased? The answer is not difficult to find. If money comes directly from government, then government is likely to want to know what is done with it. Students are in a much poorer position to question expenditure. High fees increase the ‘independence’ of universities, but do so, in reality, at taxpayers’ expense.
So what are these gorgeously entitled rectors, provosts and vice chancellors doing with the independence that they already have? Well, one thing they do is pay themselves very large amounts of money. At the maximum fee currently chargeable to a UK undergraduate, of £3225 per year, it takes more than 60 to pay the average £200,000 annual stipend 2 of the average VC. At some of the more ‘prestigious’ institutions, it takes 120 students just to keep their Provost or Rector in the style to which he has become accustomed 2. Those students may well wonder whether this represents value for money, or even if the job need exist at all.
Even the asking of this second question would be considered ridiculous by many. Every business, it will be argued, needs a CEO, and the salary of a VC may be dwarfed by the rewards of the CEO of a business with a similar budget. But universities are not businesses, and VCs are not CEOs. What do they actually do?
The answer is, quite largely, and like CEOs, they compete. They fight the corner for their own institutions. Russell Group heads agitate for better funding for their ‘top’ universities. The heads of universities outside that charmed circle fight for greater equity in the distribution of funds. Whatever the outcome, a significant portion of the funds allotted by taxpayers to Higher Education is devoted to squabbling over how those funds should be distributed. Meanwhile, the academics who actually carry out the teaching and the research try to get on with their jobs, hindered rather than helped by often bloated bureaucracies. VCs do little to help them, and may well have other jobs that take up much of their time. Often they have been ‘parachuted’ in from elsewhere, stay for a few years (some have had even shorter tenures than that) and then leave, prompting expensive and time-consuming searches for successors. There is no record of any university coming to grief during such an inter-regnum. The second managerial level, consisting largely of long-serving members of the institution, who actually know what it does and how it functions, get on with the job of ensuring that researchers continue to research and teachers continue to teach.
There are about 100 universities in the UK. Abolishing Vice-Chancellors would save us twenty million pounds every year. The university system as a whole would not be one iota the worse.
References
1 Extract from a speech by Rt Hon David Willetts MP, Oxford Brookes University, 10 June 2010
The 2004 funding structure has turned out to be surprisingly inflexible. It is in such delicate equilibrium that shifting any single element requires us to shift everything else. If fees were to go up, the Government would have to lend people the money to pay for them – and that would push up public spending. It’s not just that students don’t want to pay higher fees: the Treasury can’t afford them. So the arrangements we have now are clearly unable to respond to the current economic climate”
http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/david-willetts-oxford-brookes-university-challenge.
2 Report of speech by Vince Cable, 27 May 2010-06-13
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7768709/University-vice-chancellors-pay-out-of-step-with-reality-says-Vince-Cable.html
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