Science education wins in UK placement scheme, or does it?

Lord Mandelson, the head of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills which runs the universities, has announced a plan to expand by 10,000 the number of university places for science-related courses, but has refused to provide additional funds to science departments to teach them. Students will receive the standard grants and loans to pay their tuition costs.

Our expansion of higher education is more important now than ever as we continue to invest in a highly skilled workforce to win the jobs of the future and lead the way in building Britain’s future,” said Mandelson in a statement to the UK parliament .-

The recession has caused university placements in the UK to be wildly oversubscribed—applications are up more than 10% this year. However, due to last year’s budget overspending on education by £200 million, the government introduced a cap on the number of students who could go to university. These new places exceed this cap and will be funded through budget cuts and through cutting the repayment holiday that students can take from five years before repayment to two years. “This is a fiscally neutral change,” said Mandelson.

Universities UK , the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, gave the extra placements a cautious welcome . “We understand the thinking behind tying the student support to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) agenda at the current time,” said Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, “however we would be concerned if this were, in future, to have a negative impact on areas such as the social sciences, arts and humanities.”

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group , an association of the 20 most research intensive universities in the UK, said : “The Russell Group supports the Government’s longstanding aim to ensure that more students get the opportunity to benefit from going to university.- However, any growth in the number of students must be funded in a sustainable way that will not create real and long term difficulties for UK universities and undermine the quality of the student experience.”

Maintaining quality is sacrosanct. Subjects like engineering and science are particularly expensive to teach and we know that there is already a funding shortfall for teaching at Russell Group universities,” he added. “As a recent government study¹ has highlighted, without further investment the ‘quality of the student experience and the reputation and contribution of English higher education will suffer.’”

Paul Guinnessy

(1) The Sustainability of Teaching in English Higher Education , a report by the TRAC Strategy Group chaired by Professor Geoffrey Crossick, warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, and supported by JM Consulting.