Universities’ woe over further HEFCE budget cuts

University heads face more hardship following the publication yesterday of the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s letter detailing their financial awards for 2011-12.

The letter confirms the outline figures revealed in the budget guidance which the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills gave HEFCE in December 2010. But the letter to vice chancellors still held some unpleasant surprises—notably that the projected cuts will start to take effect in the current academic year. 

A knowledge economy needs Big Society science

Ministers aren't the only ones who have yet to grasp the need for a new contract between scientists and society. Tom Wakeford reveals the smoke-and-mirrors behind some recent research-council 'engagement' programmes, and says it’s time to debate some core values. 

 

After Pfizer, is it time to question the MRC's budget?

For decades, it has been a truism that Britain has two truly world class manufacturing industries - defence/aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Does Pfizer's decision to close its huge R&D centre at Sandwich in Kent mean we are now in the process of losing one of the two? Unfortunately - and through no fault of our own - the answer may be yes.

If so then Vince Cable's description of the decision as "extremely disappointing" will be a vast understatement and the position of the Medical Research Council as the darling of the research councils will have to be questioned.

Funding teaching or funding research? Implications of the new fee regime

Universities unable to charge above £6,000 will, as a consequence of the reduction in public spending (through HEFCE block grant), experience a significant cut in the money previously available to support teaching, while their students will pay more for less. It is this that leads the Higher Education Policy Institute to think that most universities will seek to charge the higher fees and that it is in the interest of students that they should do so. According to HEPI, under the proposed loan arrangements the extra cost of the higher fee for ‘low earners’ is less than £300.  For this they would benefit from significantly greater investment in their courses. The National Union of Students, however, is committed to campaign for the lower fee to be standard.

The real scandal of rising salaries for university vice-chancellors

Salaries for university managers are rising, and both ministers and the media are outraged. Don't join them. This concocted hysteria gives hypocrisy a good name.

Competition or partnership: could private providers solve UK higher education's supply and demand problem?

December's tuition-fee legislation is a turning point in UK higher education, but it has diverted attention from the coalition government’s intention to encourage private providers to to generate competition for state-run HE. Should the ‘traditional’ university sector fear the private providers or, as Paul Marshall suggests here, embrace the opportunities they offer?

How to read HEFCE's funding letter from BIS

Vince Cable and David Willetts are trying to steer universities in a new direction. So the ministers at the Department of Business Innovation and Skills gave the Higher Education Funding Council for England unusually extensive and detailed guidance in the annual grant letter they sent at the end of December. What follows is the full text of that letter with annotations by me in red that are intended to explain, interpret and comment on what the government is doing.

The 10 failures of Nick Clegg on tuition fees

The government’s decision yesterday to call the crunch vote on tuition fees on the earliest possible date – next Thursday – is no surprise. For as of Tuesday it is clear that the media have turned on Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrat party over tuition fees. The narrative of betrayal has taken hold and the yellow lot are getting the biggest kicking of their political lives.

If this is erosion of trust, then we have reached the point where the cliff is sliding into the sea. The reputation of the party, its leaders and most of its MPs is plumbing new depths. The party is at 10 per cent in the polls. The brand is being trashed.

Nonetheless, Clegg and Cable may still be making some progress towards what has been their prime objective on fees - securing the passage of the legislation in a crunch vote later this month in order to keep the Coalition together.

Their problem is that the damage now being inflicted daily on the Lib Dems starts to change the calculations of everyone from Clegg to backbench MPs to party members. It intensifies doubts about Clegg’s ability to provide David Cameron with the abstentions he needs to win the vote. And, even if Clegg can manage to deliver enough of his MPs, the battering raises the question of whether the victory will prove to be pyrrhic.

How has it come to this? They key is the National Union of Students’ pledge signed by all the Lib Dem MPs - or rather, how Clegg has handled it.

Is it back to the 1980s as Cameron ditches white paper on growth?

Today we have the news from the FT that the white paper on growth promised by the government for last month has been kicked into the long grass.

Apparently we're going to get a green paper by Christmas and it's unclear what - if anything - will follow, or when.

The FT says the green paper will assess what barriers the government needs to remove to speed growth in sectors such as advanced manufacturing, creative industries and retail. It will also outline what embassies can do to help promote exports. And pull together existing “horizontal” policies, such as improving the skills base, creating a more business-friendly tax regime, easing regulation regulation and improving infrastructure.

In principle, there's nothing there that the last lot weren't keen on, too. There's nothing there to justify the Prime Minister's claim that his government will be the most "pro-growth" ever. There's nothing to suggest that Vince Cable is turning his rhetoric about a "Department for Growth" into reality. And nothing to suggest the government has any idea how to exploit the "absorptive capacity" David Willetts wants to nurture in universities.

Was all that stuff from Cameron about growth around the time of the CSR just hot air to make the view of the coming cuts a bit more hazy? Is the government really going to retreat to the Thatcher era position that if the government gets out of the way the private sector will by itself generate all the growth we need?

The FT lays the blame at the feet of George Osborne, who it suggests has been too busy cutting to think about growing.

On Thursday I have to go and talk to a group of young entrepreneurs from Tower Hamlets about the glittering opportunities held out by Cameron in his Tech City speech at an event organised by the Young Foundation. What on earth am I supposed to tell them?

Oops. Cameron dismisses the one man indispensible to rapid reform of student fees

What is the single most toxic issue facing the Coalition today - student fees.

And who is the single most important person in steering the fees policy through to safe harbour -  Stephen Marston, the civil servant in charge of universities.

You may well ask therefore why the government cannot say today whether Marston will be at his desk on Monday. For without him, the chances of the government having a coherent policy to present to the House of Commons before Christmas seem extremely slim.

Marston is the Director General, Universities and Skills at the Department of Business Innovation and Skills. Or at least, he was until this morning. His post, along with two others, have today been combined into one, the new Director General Knowledge & Innovation. Today that post was awarded to Adrian Smith, previously Director General, Science and Research.

In other words, the science guy got the job. The Browne guy didn't. And Marston's post has been abolished.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Marston himself will be made redundant. He could be offered another post in the civil service. But the one thing he can't be offered is his existing job - that has gone.

Smith now has to take over Marston's responsibilities. His appointment has been welcomed by scientists. And he was previously vice chancellor of Queen Mary's, so it's not as if he's ignorant of the issues in the universities. But that is long way from having Marston's grasp of the detail of the proposed reforms, or their internecine politics, or his network of functioning relationships.

To avoid losing all Marston's expertise, BIS has a number of options. It can offer Marston a dedicated HE role under Smith - ie a demotion. I'm not sure if the civil service does that kind of thing and I doubt Marston would accept it. Or BIS can fudge the issue by leaving Marston in post for as long as it needs him. In this case of course, his post is not really redundant and the personnel people will be having kittens about a claim for constructive dismissal. Or BIS can offer him an external consultancy. All these options are problematic, dependant on Marston's goodwill and probably don't avoid dislocation of the policymaking process - after all, you can hardly pretend Smith does not now have responsibility in this area. Perhaps today the personnel people are talking the options through with Marston.

The worst case scenario for the Coalition, and far from unusual in these situations, would be for Marston to accept that he lost and decide to move his career on. In that case, he may not be at his desk on Monday.

All this is fine from the point of view of the civil service personnel handbook. Another person takes over the reins. In due course, the policy machine starts to hum smoothly along again. But what that fails to take account of is the incredible velocity with which the politicians want to drive through the reforms. If they can't get a package of reforms on to the table within a couple of weeks, the headlines will begin to contain the words "Coalition", "crisis" and "fees".

My colleagues at Research Fortnight today sought reassurance from BIS that Marston would remain for long enough to steer through the Browne reforms. Indeed, we asked simply whether BIS was sure Marston would be in post tomorrow. But there was no reassurance. All we got was, "No decisions have yet been taken about the timing of the new structure or the transitional arrangements."

It seems spectacularly careless of David Cameron to have let this happen. The Prime Minister made the effort to get his own private photographer onto the staff at Number 10. But he forgot to make sure that the civil service held on to the man who is, from a political point of view, arguably the most important official in the country right now.