One of the biggest issues around at the moment is the review being chaired by Lord Browne on the future funding of universities, concentrating on the student contribution to such funding.  I am chairing a small group to consider both the response that this university should make to the review, and the possible implications of what it might recommend.

One thing I am sure of is that whatever the outcome of the review there will be no injection of extra cash into universities.  If the recommendation is for students to pay a higher share of costs, then that will be used to reduce the share borne by the government and thus transfer the responsibility for university funding from the taxpayer to the student or graduate.  This will take universities further along the line from offering a public good (having a population with a high level of education is for the benefit of the whole of society) to higher education being seen as primarily a private good (education benefits those who receive it, but does not have a wider impact).  This would be a remarkably Thatcherite perspective that even the former Prime Minister herself never espoused - even in the early 1980s when some universities found their funding cut by up to 30% by the newly-elected conservative government.

I also doubt that universities would be allowed to raise their fees without some quid pro quo being demanded by government.  I have met David Willetts twice in the last year, and Phil Willis once, and a constant refrain from both of them is that universities have not justified what they did with the first round of fees (from 2006 onwards) in terms of improving the student experience.  Willetts has noted that the current fees plus the grant from HEFCE actually covers the cost of teaching in some (primarly Humanities) disciplines, and therefore argues that there would be no justification for increasing fees in these areas.  But at the same time some of these disciplines are the ones where student demand is highest and admissions grades at their maximum, and where the operation of supply and demand could plausibly lead to higher fees.

If we were allowed to raise fees in such subjects, would we then be obliged to spend that fee income on the students who brought it in? Or would universities be able to transfer the extra income to support higher cost subjects where the current fees plus grant do not match the costs of delivery?  What would students (and parents) say if it were transparent that a student entering to read, say, History, and paying high fees to do so, was to some extent subsidizing a student studying Materials Science where the university's income for teaching does not match the costs of delivery?  There are some interesting conundrums in any outcome from the Browne Review.  One very likely outcome will be differential fee payment for different subjects, which will have profound effects on student expectations.  My group had an interesting meeting about this today, and we will continue to meet regularly over the coming months.