The head of the universities watchdog in England has said the “golden age of higher education” could be over and all options should be on the table as the funding crisis facing the sector is “significant”.
The Office for Students (OFS) interim chair, Sir David Behan, said increased tuition fees and lifting visa restrictions on international students could help revive embattled institutions.
“I think the resilience of the sector overall has been tested by a number of different forces … the global pandemic, the impact of leaving the European Union,” he told the Sunday Times.
“We’ve had industrial action, the cost of living crisis, the increasing cost of pensions and decreasing number of international students, and then, finally, domestic undergraduate fees remaining frozen since 2012 … and what it’s meant is that the fiscal deficit for some organisations is significant.”
He called on universities to explore mergers or partnership arrangements with other institutions, amid fears some institutions could be facing bankruptcy. “It’s important that universities revise their medium-term financial strategies … They can’t just carry on,” he said.
On the flip side a lot of places then just become diploma mills pushing international students through programs because they pay full price. You see this a lot in the US, where money is first and quality education second.
True. But foreign students have always been a huge amount of UK university funding. Basically from as far back as the 1800s.
Limiting them is not the solution. Nor is it the cause of diploma mills. Reduction in government funded research grants is what forced uni to move to tick box education. And government desire to avoid administration costs is what leads to Unis without the strong educational ethics taking advantage of it.