Universities are losing money on teaching and it is time to look again at the tuition fees model.
That’s the message from University of York vice-chancellor Professor Charlie Jeffery.
He told the Guardian today (Thursday) that the funding system was broken.
“Inflation is driving up costs in a way that frankly we haven’t seen,” he told the paper.
“That of course impacts hard on the money we get for home undergraduate education, which is basically flat and has been for a decade. Most universities will now be losing money on teaching.”
International students are increasingly important to university finances. But government proposals announced in May would mean only students on research programmes would be able to bring dependants to the UK.
Mr Jeffery said: “That’s a difficult place to be at the best of times, and it does require us to think of the other income streams that can help us achieve all of our objectives. By far the most significant one of those is international students.
“And therefore it adds to the pressure if you see changes in policy which might undermine the UK’s attractiveness to international students.”
Tuition fees have been capped at around £9,000 for the last decade. He was asked if now was the time to look at the domestic tuition fee again.
Mr Jeffery said: “It is exactly the time to look at that question. I wouldn’t pose it just in that way, because there are different ways in which you can finance higher education.
“One answer could be reflecting the importance of universities to the economy in various ways: you actually put in more public funding and don’t put it all on the individual shoulders.”
Prof Chris Husbands, the vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University, told the paper that raising tuition fees might seem the most obvious response but was not a sustainable solution to the problem.
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