Dear Member of Parliament, where is the money going in HEFCE???

Dear Mr Denham

Thank you for your reply to my recent email to yourself, as one of your constituents for the Southampton Itchen constituency. I hope you will not mind me making further comment on what you have said.

As someone with an honours degree in Accounting my primary concern is the money that is being displaced out of the system which is currently operational. Because of the way that HEFCE is funding the universities at the moment, all the grant is being used to fund and innovate courses which are used for the benefit of all students.

Therefore, there are going to be some fairly advanced and estoteric modelling exercises going on to find the money (£100million) which you and your department say is going to be displaced. These exercises alone will cost £millions to finance, let alone the restructuring of university finance departments and other deconstructions. Let us sincerely hope that this exercise is not going to cost another £100million to fund.

I am extremely sceptical about what you have said in your reply for another good reason; that it has come to public notice from the Guardian web pages that HEFCE and the Universities are spending £250 million per anumn on administration of the present scheme, which surely must be the most outrageous use or misuse of taxpayers money. By the time this money has been spent, the proposals which you have had to put into practice will have been dwarfed by the administrative charges.

So it seems that the picture is by no means as clear as your Department would have us believe. Perhaps you would clarify whether or not your Department intends to correct the colossal overspend on HEFCE administration and perhaps reinstate the money on widening participation and lifelong learning which you are at present taking out of the system?

Regards, Donald Hedges.