The HEFCE modelling has at last been revealed and is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet which may well be available as a link in a future blog. At first I thought that it looked as if the Open University would not suffer over the next 3-4 years as the figures are all the same, £139m this year, next and so on.
However, on reading the Guardian, my esteemed collegaues in that excellent newspaper have put me right. Please read this:-
The Guardian
What it is saying is that over that period the Open University is set to lose £31m and the Birkbeck College, University of London, £7.8m. These are the two institutions that have done so much for lifelong learning. Needless to say, the Vice Chancellor of my University, the OU and the Master of Birkbeck are not at all pleased.
The transitional relief will have a paliative effect because students who have already signed up for these programmes will have a modicum of protection and there is obviously the beginnings of some consideration for shortage subjects. But taken at its baldest and basest, £40m or so has been stripped out from the budgets of these two great universities. There is the ongoing mantra being chanted by the government that the money will be resassigned to people who will have a chance to do first degrees. But that is not, I repeat not, lifelong learning, which the government has said that it is committed to. So much for lifelong learning, as I said to the readership of my local newspaper.
Along with our colleagues in the Open University and Birkbeck, we must all fight to resist these cuts, which are being peddled by the government as something which is good for us all. But how can something which totally strips out and annhialates lifelong learning within the HE sector be good for us....answers on a very small postcard if you please.
POST SCRIPTUM PERHAPS THE GOVERNMENT WOULD BE GOOD ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN TO ME THE EXPENDITURE OF £250MILLION ON HEFCE ADMINISTRATION. THAT SHOULD REALLY BE THE SUBJECT OF A SELECT COMMITTEE ENQUIRY IF I DONT MISS MY GUESS.
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