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Meaningless tasks and faux-business strategies prioritised by British universities have skewed their real roles of teachinig and research. Looking at decades of university growth, most expansion has been by university administration, not faculty. On the other side of the pond, one US study found that between 1975 and 2008 while the number of faculty had grown about 10% the number of administrators had grown 221% during the same period. In the UK, the large majority of universities have more administrators than they do faculty members. We are on the way to realizing an “all-administrative university” if nothing is done. André Spicer at The Guardian comments that since universities are broke, we should cut the pointless admin and get back to teaching.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:45PM (1 child)
I draw your attention to the table on Page 3 of the relevant government report [www.gov.uk]. Since 2009, the grant for teaching has dropped from £5,030m to £2,860m. The total amount per student paid by the government has dropped in real terms from £6,050 to £5,510. If you think £5,510 is more than double £6,050, then you probably paid too much for your education.
The amount that the government is spending on loans (overheads and expected default rates) has gone from £2,110m to £3,870m, which corresponds to more students taking on debt to cover the costs of their courses. The increase in loans and student debt is helping to cushion the reduction in government spending, and is contingent on making students pay interest 3% above inflation on the loans.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:57PM
Which needs to be higher still if we are to have any chance of killing non-academic subjects like "gender studies"!