‘What we have here is a repackaging of student debt. Debt is one of the greatest deterrents to students,’ University and College Union (UCU) leader Sally Hunt said yesterday.
The UCU warned that over 50,000 teachers face the sack in further and higher education, after the government’s Business Secretary Vince Cable said ‘deep cuts’ will be made, whilst students will be expected to pay even more towards their own funding.
‘If the government pushes ahead with plans for 25 per cent funding cuts then there would be a loss of 33,844 jobs in English colleges,’ the UCU said.
At least 22,500 university jobs are also threatened, bringing the total jobs to go in post-16 education in England to a staggering 56,428.
Sally Hunt said: ‘The scale of the cuts are staggering and will be a hammer blow to the country.
‘The staff who survive the cull will have far less time to spend with students and will have considerably heavier workloads to deal with.’
Business Secretary Cable was heckled as he arrived at South Bank University yesterday to deliver a speech setting out plans for a major shake-up of the university system.
‘The background is a very sombre and difficult one, financially. Without doubt the most serious within living memory,’ he said, seeking to justify his cuts programme.
He said: ‘When I was a sixth former there were barely a couple of dozen universities to apply for. We now have around 160.’
Cable continued: ‘My department, whose biggest spending commitment is universities, was facing cuts of 20 to 25 per cent if Labour had returned to office.
‘I do not yet know where we shall come out, but no one should be under any illusion that there will be any other than deep cuts in government spending on universities.’
He said that students will ‘have to pay more’, but added ‘that is, at best, only part of the answer.’
‘The truth is that we need to rethink the case for our universities from the beginning,’ he said.
‘The reality is we are going to have to develop a model in which the balance of funding for higher education in England combines less public support and more private investment.
‘Universities are independent institutions and cannot be directed like Soviet-era tractor factories.’
Justifying a graduate tax, Cable said that ‘in reality’, students already paid tuition fees of more than £3,000 a year ‘by taking a student loan, payable direct from income after graduation’.
He maintained: ‘In this sense, we already have a form of graduate tax.
‘The problem is that it is a fixed sum – a poll tax – regardless of the income of the graduate.
‘I am interested in looking at the feasibility of changing the system of financing student tuition so that the repayment mechanism is variable graduate contributions tied to earnings.
‘I have spoken to Lord Browne about this and he has assured me that he is looking at this issue as part of his review.’
Cable concluded: ‘A larger graduate contribution . . . is only part of the solution.
‘We will need to encourage more radical options than now . . . Like the wider public sector, universities are going to have to ask how they can do more for less.’
