Cap on Gowns: Sound Policymaking or a Blow to the Union?
By Jacob Joad
Higher education has been one of the hardest-hit industries by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many universities face bleak futures, with heavy funding holes being left unfilled. St Andrews, for example, has accrued a £25 million deficit as a result of COVID-19.
Travel restrictions have been widespread as a method of containing coronavirus and fears around catching or spreading the virus have had an off-putting effect on those seeking to travel in the future. Considering the importance of international students – who pay substantially more for tuition – to the revenues of higher education institutions in the UK, such a lull in international travel endangers particularly the sustainability of many universities in the future.
To ensure that this international student void is not compensated for by a feared over-admission of English-domiciled students, the government took action on Monday by introducing temporary student number controls (SNCs) to restrict the intake of English students across the entire United Kingdom. The policy provides for predicted growth estimates in student intakes based on last year’s enrolment data and forecasts, with a 5% additional growth allowance.
The policy itself is sensible. It has been criticised for its potential effect on universities’ finances, with institutions facing high levels of debt that could only potentially be filled with increased student enrolment. Alumni donations certainly help to rectify deficits at some institutions, though not all universities have wealthy enough connections or alumni on whom they can rely to recover from the deficits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, over-enrolment of students could cause problems for universities in future years, post-pandemic: for example, when (or if, in some institutions’ cases) students return to on-site teaching, such a student ‘surplus’ will need to be housed in on-campus or nearby accommodation. With the strains on accommodation already faced by many universities in the UK, combined with high rent prices in many university towns and cities, many students could find themselves in a substantial predicament over accommodation. Whilst many universities provide ‘accommodation guarantees’ for their first-year undergraduates, the potential movement of teaching online next academic year at these institutions (some have already announced this, such as the University of Cambridge) could mean that students lose out on this guarantee, therefore facing a dire, unprotected search for accommodation upon returning in the following year. Further, considering that the vast majority of English students use the SLC’s tuition fee loan system, where the government instead issues the degree funding for the duration of the course, it could place an increased financial strain upon a government already mired in budgetary issues as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The SNC document itself mentions the implications that over-admission may have on taxpayer money.
It is also worth noting that the policy makes greater allowance for admitting students studying what the Department for Education terms “subjects of strategic importance”. Most of these subjects are in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) areas, such as Physics, Maths, Engineering and Chemistry, but also include Initial Teacher Training (ITT) courses and healthcare-related subjects. In these cases, universities can ‘bid’ for some of the extra 10,000 allocated places in these subjects. 5,000 are offered to STEM and ITT courses, whilst the other 5,000 are offered to healthcare-related disciplines. As such, this policy also is also, arguably, a tacit pursuit of the UK’s economic objectives by bolstering the pool of graduates who have, according to recent graduate data from a number of sources, the best financial and employability prospects.
However, major concerns have arisen from the controls. The primary concern is its implications regarding devolution. This measure has been put into effect without consultation of any of the devolved administrations in the UK, and the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish administrations have all criticised this move. Not only do they fundamentally disagree with the policy itself, but also its implementation. Wales’ Education Minister, Kirsty Williams, penned a letter to Michelle Donelan, the UK’s Universities Minister, regarding the concerns expressed by her and the Welsh administration about the policy. Diane Dodds, Northern Ireland’s Minister for the Economy, has published an official statement, declaring that she is “wholly opposed” to the Department for Education’s decision. From Scotland, the Scottish Minister for Higher Education, Richard Lochhead, stated that the Scottish Government does not support the proposals and that “they should not apply to Scotland”.
The fury of the devolved administrations is entirely understandable. By enforcing a UK-wide blanket limit on the intake of English students, it limits devolved freedoms on university policy. It further endangers UK higher education by imposing the limit not only in England, but across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also, all of which have institutions struggling with damaging financial holes which are usually filled with international student intakes. On the other hand, enforcing such a cap on English students solely in England could result in an effective ‘exodus’ of students from England to the rest of the UK, with students being unable to find places in a university to match their ability in England due to the cap. As such, the SNCs intend to ensure fairness, but their implementation has been conducted in a seemingly unfair manner.
The most obvious and immediately implementable solution to this issue would be the repeal of the controls and to put trust in higher education institutions to not ‘over-recruit’. This does, however, leave the initial danger unsolved and, considering the record number of unconditional offers issued last year as a form of ‘pressure-selling’ university places, placing complete trust in cash-strapped universities to take in a sensible number of students would be misguided. One possibility could be that once repealed, the devolved administrations could be consulted about the controls and have them re-implemented, although this seems unlikely given the objections of the devolved governments to the idea of controls. Despite this, such an idea should not be taken off the cards: Williams’ letter to Donelan expressed a desire to find a way of implementing controls ‘compatible with devolution’. Such a course of action could lead to controls suited to the more specific needs of each administration’s institutions; for example, more English student-dependent institutions could have more liberal caps than ones less reliant on English students to ensure that universities do not get sunk by financial deficits from the virus. The current policy already uses forecasts from each institutions regarding student numbers, but the pandemic’s consequences may have shifted these forecasts for particular institutions. St Andrews itself is a prime example. Given its high international intake, it may have to look closer to home in England to meet its financial obligations through student enrolment next year.
Hopefully, despite implementing this policy without consent, the Department for Education has not lost its window for renegotiation with devolved governments. Otherwise, this policy could become another blow to unionism in the rest of the UK.