Last week, Lord Mandelson announced a spending cut of £533 million for universities in England which, not surprisingly, has sent shock waves throughout the higher education sector.In his remit letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, he declared that the budget for English universities would be cut from £7.81 billion in 2010 to £7.29 billion in 2011.
As yet, it has not been confirmed whether this is on top of the £600 million of efficiency savings identified for the university sector in the Pre-Budget report.
At a time when youth unemployment has increased to record levels, many are finding it difficult to understand the logic of this announcement. Earlier this month, the number of 16 to 24 year-olds out of work in the UK increased to 952,000 for the three months to October 2009, the highest figure since records began in 1992.
Not surprisingly, this issue is becoming a hot political potato.
Only recently, the Prime Minister personally assured young jobseekers that new measures would bring down unemployment in the coming year. However, the main problem for the UK Government’s approach is that if you ask companies about vacancies, they will tell you that the jobs are simply not there as Britain struggles to emerge out of recession.
This is because businesses, in order to cope with the economic downturn, have shortened their employees’ working week and therefore any recovery will naturally benefit those existing workers on shorter hours rather than any new recruits. Indeed, there are worries that, unlike previous recoveries from a recessionary period, the growth in the economy will be not be led by a massive growth in employment, at least in the short term.
Until companies do begin to hire again, it is imperative that the government does not create a lost generation of young people who have no job prospects.
Ensuring that, in the absence of employment, they have access to educational opportunities to upskill themselves for a competitive knowledge-based economy is crucial during a downturn. That is why many have seen this decision to cut funding to the English university sector as potentially damaging to the UK’s economic future.
As higher education is a devolved matter, the question for Wales is whether the Assembly Government will follow Lord Mandelson’s lead?
Certainly, the new First Minister Carwyn Jones has made it clear said that he will protect education spending in Wales during the coming year. However, it is worth noting that Alistair Darling did the same in his pre-budget report but the caveat from the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that when it came to education, it was schools that were to be given immunity from any spending cuts and not universities.
If similar cuts to higher education were to take place in Wales, then it would mean that the sector would lose around £30 million in 2011.
Given that the vast majority of institutional spending is on staff, then can we expect universities to begin to prepare for a round of hundreds of redundancies in the early spring? I sincerely hope not as this will not only damage teaching in the lecture rooms, but could impact on the involvement of universities within a range of critical economic projects, most notably those funded through European Structural Funds.
As this column has pointed out time and time again, if we are to create the small clever nation that politicians eulogise about and, more importantly, Wales is to recover quickly from the recession, then the Welsh Assembly Government must continue to invest in high skills, technology and innovation. With private sector research expenditure in Wales continuing to be the lowest in the UK, our reliance on universities as the engines for innovation, skills and growth is higher than for any other region.
Nelson Mandela once said that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Certainly, if we are to change the future of the Welsh economy, then we must continue to invest in those institutions which are responsible for the education of our young people and create a world class economy that is based on their knowledge and skills.
Comments
There are those who do not pull their weight and who are not good examples or good educators of our young people
There are also people heading up departments and faculty that are paid fat salaries, who are not up to the job.
So may be the education sector should take a reality check and sort its self out, then may be the cuts would impact where they should be not where they will be seen.