CDBU’s Position on the Unsustainability of UK University Funding Models
The CDBU believes:
1. That the current university funding models in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, though different from one another, are similarly unsustainable. Over-reliant on income from international students, these funding models are in large part responsible for the growing crisis in university finances, which is damaging research and education and reducing the sector’s capacity to contribute to the economy and to broader society.
2. That higher education offers a number of benefits to the public as well as the individual and that this is insufficiently recognised by the current funding model.
3. That the current balance between public and private funding of universities warrants urgent review. Tuition fees and interest payments are much too burdensome on students. British students pay the highest home fees in the world for public universities and remain indebted through much, sometimes all, of their lives. The funding contribution from the state is too low. There is an urgent and imperative need for the Government to devise a transition to a more equitable funding model for UK Higher Education that begins to redress this imbalance.
4. That the government must take immediate steps to reduce the costs of higher education to students and to alleviate the debt burden on them.
5. That student maintenance loans should be increased and parental contribution thresholds raised.
6. That tuition fees should in the short term be reduced to a level commensurate with average higher education fees levied in other Western states.
7. That the government needs in the short term to recognise the ways in which higher education serves the wider public and the nation, and ensure the provision of a state funding contribution that allows it to continue to do so.
