The British university system is facing a steep decline, a crisis in the making for over a decade. In the last year, universities have announced over 12,000 job cuts. A report by the Office for Students warns that 40 per cent of England’s universities are facing budget deficits this year, with courses and departments at risk of closure. A great deal of uncertainty has now gripped the university sector.
Several factors account for this degradation. Historically, the university sector was funded by the government and essentially free for students. This, however, changed with successive governments pushing for mass enrolment, where students began sharing the cost of their education.
The government introduced an initial fee cap of £1,000 (US$1,338) in 1998. It was effectively tripled twice – in 2006 and 2012 – eventually increasing to £9,250 in 2017. Another slight hike came in 2024.
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Overall, the fee caps have resulted in a financial burden on universities, which still have to pay their staff reasonable salaries. This was combined with the manifestation of Brexit, which led to British universities losing access to £1.5 billion a year in grants from the European Union. To offset these costs, universities began to over-rely on foreign students who often pay up to three times the costs that domestic students pay.
In turn, they began to overinvest in shinier infrastructure and more administrative staff, with vice-chancellors earning an average of six times more than their staff in 2017, creating a financially unsustainable model.
The UK appears to have prioritised STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects more than SHAPE (social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy). Combined with the marketisation of higher education, this has negatively affected the sector by reducing the availability of courses.
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