University cuts will hit specialisation
David Blackburn 5:28pm
Cuts in University funding are inevitable. £915 million will be cut over three years. This morning’s front pages were full of dire predictions. Jobs will be lost – the University and College Union predict that up to 15,000 will go – and expertise will be squandered with them. Kings College London has announced that Palaeography, the study of ancient documents and illuminated manuscripts, will not be taught as a separate subject from August.
Now, this may not sound like a much of loss, but this skill is essential for historians and archaeologists studying Britain’s unparalleled collection of medieval sources, a legacy of the strength of English medieval government. Incunabula and ancient documents are an enormous but unsung part of British heritage, the study of which will lapse thanks to this government’s reckless economic management and a social engineering programme facilitated through the dilution of quality in higher education.
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Olaf Rye
February 9th, 2010 5:57pm Report this commentAs I work at an university (won't say which one, to protect myself from the mobs of socialists that would seek to lynch me), and in archaeology, I must confess that I am not terribly concerned about the university cuts so long as the management is obliterated. At one university for which I worked, they imposed a 105% overhead on all externally funded projects, claiming that this was the cost for them to administer these and the costs of support, offices, and so forth. Obviously, any institution that requires so much money for management is poorly managed. The pity is, lecturers will be made redundant before management and administrative staff. Perhaps they should take the opportunity to not only sack as many managers as possible, but a vast number of the tenured lecturers that do nothing but indulge in paltry politics and obstruct good research work.
Robert Pattz
February 10th, 2010 4:52am Report this commentThis is terrible morning news. Well, many state colleges are really on cut of their budgets for the reason that local government will allocate the educational budget for economic recovery. And since one of the biggest economic problems of the last 30 years is the overall wage decrease for the majority of American workers, and also more workers globally. Many would say that they have increased â“ and in a limited sense, they have â“ but here is the problem: Wages have increased in currency amounts, but not relative to buying power. The costs of goods and services have increased above the rate of inflation (health care, tuition, and so forth), whereas the average workers wage has not (CEOs have!) and it is not a mystery why people are running for payday loans. There are a lot of wage problems, and that seems to be an economic issue that needs fixing more than anything.
Gary Pratt MBE
February 10th, 2010 10:05am Report this commentWhilst any funding cut to something as important as higher education is to be lamented, perhaps this is an opportunity to reverse the counter productive policy of widening access.
University should be a state funded privilege for those (in an inevitable minority) who deserve it academically, regardless of socio-economic background. The sooner we remove the now ingrained mindset amongst secondary school pupils that university is the only way to a successful future, the better. Apprenticeships, and vocational colleges can provide society with excellent workers, who themselves can be highly succesful. Universities should be places where the emphasis is on academic enquiry, not simply increasing employability.
If the right cuts are made as funding decreases, this could become a reality once again (extra funding would, of course, be needed for vocational training in other institutions). Now the emphasis in universities is on profitability, this is most likely just fantasy.
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