Privatisation threatens UK's reputation for education excellence, warns union

Sally Hunt, general secretary of UCU will say that the curriculum, research, core subjects, staff/student relationships, choice of degree courses, entry standards and even quality control are all under threat in her key note speech to a conference in central London today.

Speaking at the 'Challenging the market in education' conference, Sally Hunt will say: 'The creeping privatisation in further and higher education is one of the biggest threats we face today. In the ten years up to 2004, private sector investment in tertiary education grew by 85%, while public spending grew by just 6%. Private sector investment now represents 30% of all spending in tertiary education. That's double the EU average.

'The market in higher education, which the government pursued through the tuition fees policy, has led to strategically important departments, like Physics at Reading University, being axed at the whim of an anxious vice-chancellor because he or she doesn't see them as sustainable in the current market. They can do this with no regard for national or local provision, which has led to us now having areas of the country where a student seeking to study certain courses does not have a local option. Why should that student be forced to move to another part of the country just to follow their dream? What happens if they cannot afford to?

'The market is failing. Our members feel that reality every day. They feel it in the emergence of a two-tier workforce - everywhere the private sector gets a foothold we see attempts to impose worse terms and conditions, worse pay, attempts to remove people from their final-salary pension schemes and an even greater use of casualised staff.

'They feel it in the endemic short-termist decision making that arises from the funding regime – instability, near constant rounds of job cuts, restructure, casualisation – all these are aggravated by the imposition of market mechanisms and they will be aggravated even more by the government's enthusiasm for employer-led courses. And if you want a vision of how the future could look, all you have to do is look at what's happening now, at the growing chaos we see among the private companies themselves.'

The conference also sees the release of 'Marketisation and the growth of the private sector in tertiary education'. The report explores the challenges universities and colleges face in safeguarding quality teaching, research and standards in the face of the privateers.

The report explores the following issues:

• Private funding
  
  The decade from 1995-2004 saw overall private expenditure in tertiary education grow by 85%. In same period public expenditure grew by just 6%. The proportion of tertiary education income that comes from the public sector is now significantly below the OECD average of 75% and the EU average of 83%.
• Threats to the curriculum
  
  Plans for more employer-led courses will create new pressures to save costs by the use of e-learning, shorter courses, more two-year degrees and lead to universities being under greater pressure to sign them off with token accreditation because they will have to win contracts.
  
  E-learning technology has huge potential but it should not be used as a short cut to raise numbers in education on the cheap or at the cost of the learning experience.
• Threats to departments and the death of certain subject areas
  
  Colleges and universities are taking knee-jerk decisions to close departments and courses on short-term fluctuations in student recruitment or failure to win a research grants. A bad performance can lead to a closure. An example of this is Reading's Physics department – a strategically important subject and department - lost at the whim of an anxious vice-chancellor.
  
  Departments closing with no regard for regional or national provision. Research shows students are now choosing to study closer to home because of the high costs involved with studying for a degree. This, coupled with closing departments, is leading to some students not having the choice to study certain courses locally.
• The impact of paying customers 
  
  The report says institutions have not come to terms with students and parents expecting more as they're 'paying for it'. Staff find themselves under greater pressure to deliver more for less, which is leading to ever-increasing workloads, admin and stress.\
• Threats to quality control
  
  The report highlights the examples of private providers taking over the provision of English classes for foreign students. Off-the-shelf courses, not written by specialists, are being aggressively marketed with guaranteed routes of progression to the partner university. How can it ever be guaranteed? What if there are high applications from home students to the institution? Will places really be offered to lesser-qualified foreign students because they paid up for an entry English class?
• Threats to research
  
  The report argues the threat to blue-sky research is obvious. Anything temporarily not fashionable or an obvious money-spinner will not succeed in securing funding. There are already concerns that certain companies need certain results and are pressuring the researchers and compromising their academic freedom. What great historical finds would never have been permitted these days because of tight restrictions on funding?
  
  How can you have innovative research if you have to look for funding every two years and your sponsor wants you to get a certain result?
  The report cites the New Economics Foundation report that showed the growing role of the oil and gas industry in the funding of research in geology departments and research centres. That report claimed that research on fossil fuel extraction dwarfs that on renewable or sustainable energy.

Challenging the market in education - Marketisation and the growth of the private sector in tertiary education: a preliminary report, Jul 10 [255kb]