As early Christmas presents go, Lord (Peter) Mandelson’s announcement of swingeing cuts to university budgets lacked something of the festive spirit – the BBC reports:
The government is to cut university funding in England by a total of £398m for 2010-11 compared with this year, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said. In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council For England (Hefce), he also asks universities to protect quality and access to higher education. His letter confirms efficiency savings of £180m and £83m – and makes a further £135m budget reduction.
Liberal Democrat Shadow Universities Secretary, Stephen Williams, is none too impressed:
The Government failed to live up to its commitment to fund extra university places and now it seems to be punishing the universities that went out of their way to help the pupils that had been let down.
“Mandelson has already been laying the groundwork for a massive hike in tuition fees that will leave students with tens of thousands of pounds of debt and deter those from poorer backgrounds from going at all.
“Now he’s forcing universities to offer those who do stump up the fees less choice, lower standards and fewer teaching hours. Only the Liberal Democrats are prepared to stand up for students from all backgrounds. That’s why we’ve pledged to scrap tuition fees and fight any plans to raise them.”
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6 Comments
Unless the Liberal Democrats get off the fence and categorically state that they will NOT support a minority Labour Government in any future hung parliament – no one is likely to vote for them; preferring to make sure Labour no longer govern us by voting (God help us) for the Tories.
Come on Liberal Democrats! . . . For God sake grow a pair and tell Labour to “Get Stuffed” – after all, it is the right time of year to tell them.
But we should also tell the tories to get stuffed too –
who wants to prop up that set of intellectually bankrupt non-entities…??
Who’s on the fence? A coalition in a hung parliament is unlikely; we’ll just get a minority government and each issue will be dealt with as it comes. As to the question of Lib Dem policy if one does form, this has already been answered. Clegg said he’ll follow the obvious preference expressed by the voters and start by talking to whoever gets the largest number of seats.
As people have said, this money will probably get replaced by higher fees. What will the LDs do? Worse univs, or higher funding?
Yes, if we feel this is an important issue and not where the cuts should fall, that would be part of our negotiations in the event of considering whether to take part in any proposed coalition. However, as Tim says, if we wanted to reduce these cuts, we would have to say what alternative provision we would make – cuts elsewhere? Higher taxes? Higher tuition fees? Simply to say “no cuts” would be juvenile and irresponsible.
One thing we need to push home is that much of what people are finding rotten about Labour is even worse with the Tories. It was the Tories who pushed us down the dead-end this country is now in – over-reliant on the financial services industry, mortgage-based personal debt allowed to build up to stupid levels, allowing control of vital services to fall into the hands of those who have no loyalty to this country and will pull out when times get tough. Just today I had a leaflet from our local Tories with the headline attacking Labour for the growth in the number of people on the council house waiting list and the lack of any council houses built during the time of Labour government. What a cheek, given that the reason for all this was the housing policy initiated by Mrs Thatcher’s government and just carried on by Labour. Yet so much of what appeal theTories have now is essentially people are fed up with Labour – for pursuing what were and still are Tory policies. The Tories only offer the same but worse.
So why can’t we say this louder and more clearly? In the festive spirit of goodwill to all party members, I shall not answer that question today.
Back to Mandelson, how are universities meant to keep up standards faced with funding cuts like this? I know already of posts unfilled, things not getting done, sloppiness to get by. “Cutting bureaucracy” always sounds fine until the long term effects hit. I work in a university, and I know already the admin staff are run off their feet.
Mandelson asks universities to teach two year degrees. And he presides over a university funding system which expects teaching staff to produce research papers published in the top world conferences – at the threat of sacking if they don’t. So when are we supposed to do the research and write these papers if we don’t have any break in the teaching which is what a two-year degree would mean?
I hadn’t noticed that Mandleson’s power grab had included Universities, what a disaster. France and Germany are pumping money into higher education during this recesssion to ensure they don’t have young people on the unemployment scrapheap so what is our response? To slash university funding, total idiocy