The Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) has endorsed the British Academy’s call for a comprehensive review of higher education and encourages all members to lobby their MPs to call upon the new Prime Minister and his government to institute such a review as a matter of urgency. We have produced this template letter, which you can cut and paste and adapt as you see fit. As parliament is in recess now, it would be worth sending a follow-up email in mid-September if you have not heard back from your MP by then.
If you do not know who your MP is, you can find out on the website TheyWorkForYou.com
Dear ,
[Name of your MP]
I write to draw your attention to the current funding crisis in Higher Education and to ask you to raise this issue with the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, as a matter of urgency. Nationally, we have a funding model that is no longer fit for purpose; hugely high fees that no longer cover the costs of teaching and research; and vast and increasing numbers of young people burdened with unsustainable levels of debt. Higher Education Institutions across the country are struggling to survive. One in two universities is cutting jobs and/or closing multiple programmes and departments and across the country upwards of 4000 jobs have already been lost.
[Insert information about your own Institution/discipline here]
The consequences of this crisis are substantial. The worst hit universities are non-Russell group providers, but high profile cuts are now also being imposed in numerous Russell Group institutions. Although many disciplines have been affected, cuts have fallen particularly harshly on Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines, especially Modern Languages, English and History.The British Academy has shown that cuts are creating areas in the country with no provision in a given subject in commutable distance; uch ‘cold spots’ threaten to exclude less-privileged students, who need to live at home during their studies, from certain disciplines. In some regions subjects such as Modern Languages are already accessible only to students who can afford to attend universities further afield.
[Again, Insert information about your own Institution/discipline here if appropriate]
Twenty years ago, the idea of a university going under would have been unthinkable; now, it is a real danger. Such an eventuality would be catastrophic for that institution’s locality. Universities are major employers, anchoring their respective communities in all sorts of ways. The effects of a university failing would ripple out far beyond its immediate communities of staff and students, devastating its wider community. Reputationally, the crisis is costing the UK nationally: UKHE is fundamental to our national success and a significant element of the UK’s ‘soft power’. Right now there is no joined-up strategy or co-ordination to address these problems. There is no mechanism for universities to collaborate over the provision of undergraduate teaching to prevent or alleviate ‘cold spots’ for example, and no clear national sense of what strategies we should be pursuing to get the sector back on its feet. The British Academy have been calling for a comprehensive review of Higher Education for some time; the Council for the Defence of British Universities has recently added its voice to that call. Such a review would be a first step in addressing the critical problems that beset our HE system at the current time. I am asking you to raise these issues with the new Prime Minister, and to support the call for a comprehensive review of our university sector.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
[Your Name and Home Address]