'New providers': The creation of a market in higher education

Radical Philosophy

Volumn , Issue 167, 2011, Pages 2-8

  Mcgettigan, Andrew ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 80055048343     PISSN: 0300211X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (12 October 2010). www.independent.gov.uk/browne-report.
2. £3,375 per annum in 2011/12, topping up the basic HEFCE allocation of £3,670 (excluding London weighting) for degrees the government assesses as cheapest to run, mostly arts and humanities (socalled 'Band D' subjects), which increases substantially for Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine ('STEM' disciplines).
3. The footnotes to the page of guidance available on the BIS's website: www.bis.gov.uk/policies/higher-education/students/student-finance.
4. The potential impact of this undergraduate debt on postgraduate and clinical study is now acknowledged to be such a problem that Willetts has had to reconvene Professor Adrian Smith's committee on postgraduate study.
5. Willetts to British Academy, 1 March 2011: 'there is still a lot of taxpayer money going into universities but in rather different ways ... about £6.5 billion in tuition loans (on top of £2 billion of remaining teaching grant going to the high-cost subjects), £2 billion in maintenance grants and scholarships, and £3.5 billion in maintenance loans.' Willetts's speeches are collected at www.bis.gov.uk/news/speeches/minister/david-willetts.
6. Guidance Letter to OFFA §5.5-5.7: 'Where an institution wishes to include... the use of financial assistance to students, as outlined in the Higher Education Act 2004, we hope you will encourage the use of financial waivers. A waiver has the effect of reducing the cost of borrowing to both the pub licpurse and the student.... Previously there was an expectation that every institution would provide the poorest students with a minimum bursary ... that expectation no longer applies' (my stress). www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/higher-education/docs/g/11-728-guidance-to-director-fair-access.
7. Those institutions, almost all, wishing to charge more than £6,000 are required to negotiate with OFFA to reach 'Access Agreements' covering outreach initiatives and support schemes for poorer students.
8. It is difficult to model the impact of RPI and wage inflation over the next thirty years. BBC figures commissioned from 'leading accountants' are misleading in so far as they assume wage inflation at 4 per cent and RPI of 2 per cent for the next thirty years (at March 2011, RPI was 5.5 per cent with wage inflation around 2.2-2.5 per cent). Such unlikely parameters mean their lifetime repayment figures offer only a basic lesson here in compound interest rates. On their model, the average annual salary comes in at around £78,000 by 2045. www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12767850.
9. Tucked away in Part 8 are three clauses: one replaces the relevant clauses in the 1998 Higher Education Act so as to grant the secretary of state the power to set interest rates up to commercial levels; another alters the same passages of the 2008 Sale of Student Loans Act to allow third-party providers to charge commercial rates. For more detail, see Andrew McGettigan, 'Further Marketization in Higher Education: The Potential Sell-off of Student Loans', www.metamute.org/en/news_and_analysis/further_marketisation_in_higher_education_the_potential_sell_off_of_student_loans.
10. Willetts at Guardian HE Summit, 16 March 2011.
11. Nick Barr, Professor of Public Economics at LSE, has proposed levying an 'insurance premium' on those institutions wishing to charge more than £7,000 to mitigate against risk.
12. Willetts, Speech to Universities UK, 25 February 2011.
13. 'Public loan funding extends to modern-day Mary Poppinses, make-up artists and homeopaths', www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=415584&c=1.
14. UCU's briefing, 'Subprime Education? A Report on the Growth of Private Providers and the Crisis of UK Higher Education', www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/k/l/ucu_subprimeed_briefing_sep10.pdf.
15. www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/12/david-cameron-big-society.
16. www.dta.org.uk/whatsnew/hottopics/communityorganisers.
17. Willetts, Speech to Universities UK, 25 February 2011.
18. Andrew McGettigan, 'In the Wings: Deregulation and Private, For-profit Providers in the Proposals for Higher Education', www.metamute.org/en/news_and_analysis/in_the_wings_deregulation_and_private_for_profit_providers_in_the_proposals_for_higher_education.
19. Matt Charles has identified this blind spot - dependency on endowments - in Martha Nussbaum's defence of the Liberal Arts. 'Carry on Campus', Radical Philosophy 166, March/April 2011, pp. 41-3.