Sector wide administration costs of £250m?

A friend on the Facebook group has been good enough to advise me that Hefce does not itself cost £250m; he says that this is an estimate of what the system costs sector wide. I have already given the link to the Guardian article in which this figure appears.

Like it or not, this figure comes from somewhere and presumably from some audit group or the other. Would someone perhaps let me know why this money is being wasted when the government is now proposing chopping limbs from the sector, in the form of disposing of life long learning, not to say widening participation.

As I have already said, in the case of my own University, £31m has been taken from the budget for 2008-9 to be replaced by we know not what, but lets call it transitional twiddles, to be on the safe side. Now all the OU has to do is to find the students to fit into the twiddly bits to make sure that its funding is £139m. Eh voila, another set of tick boxes fulfilled.

I hate to say this but I dont think this government likes learning very much; its an inconvenient thing really. All those people who might be able to challenge those stories put out, that we do all this in your name.

All through my life, I have seen successive governments pull up the drawbridge on lifelong learning. Now we have got back to the 1970's situation of "No you cannot have another grant!" Oliver Twist had nothing on New Labour. Of course they keep on forgetting that this is our money and not theirs.

I got my pension forecast six months back. I have nade 28 years contribution into the system, have three years to pay and have another eight years to go through. Its just a reminder; have I paid taxes and national insurance all these years just to see the money I paid shifted about in an aimless fashion. I think not.