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Comment by flumpcakes | Hacker News Reader

The UK Gov funding of universities does not cover their operational costs. I am not sure how we silently got ourselves into this position but the fact is that without foreign students the universities will run out of money. It's strange to me as some of these universities have portfolios of property in the billions of pounds. I would have thought more industry collaboration and smarter use of property could generate income for the universities. Unfortunately there are many high tech well funded industries that get constant campaigns against them on campuses, mostly by students not even in a related field.

I'm not sure how you fix this. The UK is sleep walking into becoming irrelevant.

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I think that's a bit of an oversimplification to be fair, pretty much all of our "traditional" universities are absolutely capable of standing on their feet without international students, I mean if you look at the assets of just (any given) college at cambridge; they're swimming in money. Trinity (used to?) own the 02 arena as a fairly minor part of their holdings for example.

The story is very different for "ex-polys" like Sheffield Hallam, or oxford brooks many of whom absolutely trade on the basis of foreign students essentially propping up the entire operation more or less.

From my direct experience, even the Russel group universities are in a dire financial situation. At least that's the top down message, again being positive in cash for many years and owning property to me would be a good position but I have first hand knowledge of Russel group universities cutting staff/roles/courses and going after the foreign students as much as they can.

Some of this is their own making - for example the 'highly respected' universities not doing clearing so when their intake is lower than expected they don't top that up with 2nd choices.

Schools are now competing within universities to win student retention so their numbers don't look as bad / to help protect their budgets from being slashed further.

> pretty much all of our "traditional" universities are absolutely capable of standing on their feet without international students

This is simply not true. At least not currently possible. If the UK made the _strategic decision_ then I don't see why we couldn't, but currently if all foreign students boycott'd the UK then the majority of our universities would be bankrupt. (Again, in the way they are currently managed: they could sell property etc. but that's never considered.)

I dont have the data, but Oxford Brookes is actually an exception and I don't think the only one. It's awash with money because of the sheer volume of domestic wealthy attendees with various donations to various causes. Sheffield Hallam and most of the other polys aren't usually in quite the same position and your point stands.

I've looked at the data for some of the Russell Group and, coming from a US perspective, I was rather shocked at how reliant even top UK universities are on tuition. Apart from Oxbridge, they mostly don't have anywhere near the cashflow from endowments or alumni donations as the US Ivy League does.

I'm sure you're right (equally there's other exceptions) it was just the first ex-ploy that jumped to the top of my mind. The theme is true though.

> I am not sure how we silently got ourselves into this position

Two things:

1. converting all the old Polytechnics to Universities, in 1992, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universities_in_the_United_Kin...

followed by

2. trying to get '50%' of kids into further education https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/mar/08/johncarvel

The state already paid for education to the age of 18. Another 3 years of specialized education costs (the state) more. Getting more kids into HE, costs more even when they fees that are still state subsidized. Hence the increase in unsubsidised foreign students.

It's debatable whether the desired outcome of better educated and 'more employable' 21 year olds was actually achieved, or whether it simply removed a large cohort from the unemployment figures.

It could have been but what we say was application inflation where jobs that didn't require a degree suddenly needed one. I think unemployment figures is the most likely one, all we did was saddle a generation with an additional they won't pay back it is one of the worst government decisions of all time.

I found the anti-banking and anti-military campaigns on campus to be fantastic sources of information that helped me understand more of the reality of the companies who were trying to hire me. It was incredibly biased and performative, but so is the other side of the conversation.

Indeed, all info is good as long as you check the intended/implicit bias if nothing else it's indicative of what they want you to think about something.

For me I draw the line at military systems (though given the type of programming I do not really relevant) and gambling systems (which actually has come up before and was a lot more money but I decided that me looking in the mirror and liking the person looking back mattered more) - I don't presume to judge other people for it though, it's my personal choice.

At least some of the problem is the level of costs which are spent on admin activities instead of teaching (research is supposed to be separately funded although in reality it's messy). That's where I'd start.

The admin staff are very much underpaid in comparison to academic staff, and it would be impossible for the academic staff to manage without the admin staff. Also, there is fairly little admin staff at the school level compared to academic staff. When you get to "central" staff, then yes it's pretty much 100% admin/directors/c-level/etc. staff and I don't know what they do that's not being done by the hard worked school staff.

> I would have thought more industry collaboration and smarter use of property could generate income for the universities.

It probably could but Universities as with all organisations are going to take the easy path and trading in on the prestige of UK universities for foreign students is easier and more profitable.

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