Tuition at some British universities could rise to rival the rates at top private American institutions if the proposals by a government-commissioned panel released on Tuesday are adopted. The long-anticipated review, which will help shape the government’s response to a financing crisis facing British universities, encourages a market-oriented approach toward higher education.
The report’s bold tone and wide-ranging recommendations prompted intense reactions across the country. Leading research universities praised its support of substantial tuition increases as necessary for higher education’s survival, while professors and students decried what they called the death of the public university in Britain.
The debate over higher education’s future has become so intense that it may imperil Britain’s coalition government if Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are unable to forge a path acceptable to the majority of their party members.
The group that produced the report, “Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education in England: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding & Student Finance,” was headed by Lord Browne of Madingley, a former chief executive of BP, and included six other leading higher education and business figures.
The panel’s recommendations, which focus broadly on the financing and oversight of higher education, will create “a revolutionary new system, which, for the first time, will put students in control of shaping their experience of higher education,” Lord Browne said in a videotaped statement, by creating a competitive climate in which institutions able to convince students that their programs are “worthwhile” are financially rewarded.
To create such a climate, the basic financing structure of higher education would change from the current system in which institutions receive government money based on student numbers to one in which students pay more but also have a more direct role in the allocation of government financing.
“Money will no longer go to institutions just for being there,” Lord Browne said. “Money will instead follow the student, meaning that student choice becomes the key principle in the system.”
Specifically, the report recommends eliminating the cap on tuition at universities, which is currently set at £3,290, or $5,240, at English universities.
Universities would be free to set their own tuition rates based on market forces and, if the review’s recommendations go into effect, top institutions are likely to begin charging thousands of pounds more. All but one British university are public institutions, and most rely on the government for the bulk of their financing.
A Long-Term View
Lord Browne was appointed to conduct the independent review by the previous Labour government and was asked to base his recommendations on three fundamental principles—improving quality, increasing participation rates, and creating long-term sustainability.
As is the case now, the recommendations would require students to pay back their government loans only when their income reaches a certain level. That level is now set at £15,000, or $23,880, and the review recommends raising it to £21,000, or $33,430. Loans not paid off after 30 years would be written off, an increase from the current limit of 25 years.
The report outlines several measures meant to ensure that higher education remains affordable in the face of higher costs, and that students from low-income backgrounds are not deterred.
The government would continue to underwrite loans for living costs, with nonrepayable grants for low-income students. The report also recommends the abolition of several existing higher-education regulators and the creation of a single council with oversight responsibilities that would include quality and access issues.
There are also built-in disincentives to raise tuition beyond a certain level. Institutions that charge up to £6,000 would be allowed to keep all the money, but a levy would be assessed on any amount above that figure to cover the government’s costs in underwriting the student loans.
“As the fee amount rises, the marginal benefit to the institutions declines,” the report says. Additionally, institutions that charge over £7,000 a year will be subjected to heightened oversight, to ensure that students are not being deterred because of cost.
The panel also focused its attention on raising participation of part-time students. “The lack of support for part-time study,” the report says, “makes it much more difficult for this country to catch up with other countries on the skill levels of the existing work force.”
Such students are now required to pay tuition upfront, while full-time students have been able to defer repayment on their tuition until they are earning a minimal amount. The report recommends allowing the deferral for both full- and part-time students.
The report also recommends measures designed to ensure that students have access to career advice and employability information when selecting institutions.
Salvation or Destruction?
Reaction to the Browne report was swift and intense.
Universities UK, which represents the vice chancellors of all British universities, effectively endorsed the recommendations. “We are extremely pleased that Lord Browne’s proposals build on the fair and progressive elements of the current system,” said the group’s president, Steve Smith.
“We know these are difficult decisions, but in an era of public funding cuts, we have to look fairly and squarely at who pays for the cost of higher education. The alternatives would mean universities having to reduce the number of student places or returning to a period of underfunding. Both of these would be hugely damaging to students, universities, and the economy.”
The Russell Group, which represents Britain’s 20 top research-intensive universities, was far stronger in its approval of the proposals.
“We support the urgent and necessary reforms outlined by the Browne Review,” said the group’s director general, Wendy Piatt, in a written statement. “These recommendations could make or break our world-class universities. That’s because, bluntly, our leading institutions will not be able to compete with generously-funded universities in other countries if they are not able to secure extra funding.”
Britain’s leading faculty union, the University and College Union, however, expressed dismay at the recommendations and warned that they would have a “devastating effect,” including the closure of some institutions and narrowed curricula at others.
“This is a savage attack on what a university is and what it can offer to all students—not just those with deep pockets—as it effectively privatizes the cost of higher education from state to family,” the union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, said in a written statement. “Browne’s proposals would make our public degrees the most expensive in the world. At an enormous cost of between £40,000 and £70,000 for one child’s education, it would be the final nail in the coffin for an affordable university degree for many ordinary families.”
The National Union of Students adopted a similar tone. “Lord Browne’s review would hand universities a blank check and force the next generation to pick up the tab for devastating cuts to higher education,” said Aaron Porter, the union’s president, in a written statement. Introducing a market approach to higher education tuition would, he added, increase the pressure on students “to make decisions based on cost rather than academic ability or ambition.”
A Political Powder Keg
The full impact of the report will become clear only once the government decides how to act upon the recommendations. It is in the midst of a comprehensive spending review, which will be made public next week and is expected to detail sweeping cuts of as much as 25 percent across the higher-education sector—the latest in a series of budget cuts universities and colleges have faced in the past year.
Many Liberal Democrats have promised to adhere to an earlier pledge not to raise tuition; the Conservatives, which include Prime Minister David Cameron and universities minister David Willetts, are seen as more likely to support the report’s market-based provisions.
Just hours after the report was released, Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat and secretary of state for business, innovation, and skills, whose cabinet office oversees universities, said in a statement to the House of Commons that the government was “considering” capping tuition at £7,000, rather than allowing it to be set by individual institutions, as the review’s most radical recommendation envisions.
Earlier this year Mr. Cable proposed a graduate tax for financing higher education, but that approach was soundly rejected in the report.
“A graduate tax has some attractive features,” it noted, “but it is unworkable and it weakens institutional autonomy as well as the role of student choice.”
Mr. Cable, who signed the tuition pledge during the election season, now faces an insurrection in his party against the Browne proposals. It is not clear that legislation allowing the cap to be lifted could be passed without the parliamentary support of those opponents. The previous increase in tuition rates passed by a narrow parliamentary majority in 2004 and was among the most contentious items of legislation introduced by Tony Blair’s government.
Judging from the rhetoric in play Tuesday, the fight is likely to be a bitter one.
