Warwick vice chancellor calls for cheaper degree options

Warwick’s vice chancellor Nigel Thrift has called for cheaper degrees to be offered to students who stay in their home towns to study.

“Higher education has to play its part and find its fair share of deficit reduction, but we should not let the work universities and colleges do in driving economic prosperity be swept away by an avalanche of austerity,” said Mr Thrift.

“We are going to need to make major cost savings in the short-term, as well as grapple with longer-term arguments about the future of fees.

“The only way we will be able to afford to expand the number of students is if we offer a new type of degree.”

The comments come in advance of a report to be published on June 10 by the Institute of Public Policy and Research (IPPR), whose Future of Higher Education Commission Mr Thrift chairs. The report is timed to be released before the next UK Spending Review, which is expected to outline further cuts to higher education, on 26 June.

Mr Thrift added that “[t]he current funding system privileges full-time residential courses supported by student loans. But this is not appropriate for many potential students, who want to study vocational courses in their local area, live at home and combine their studies with paid employment.”

The report proposes the introduction of £5,000-a-year degrees (as opposed to the current typical fee of up to £9,000) focused on vocational learning which would be offered to students who study in the university of their home town.

The cheaper degree would come at the price of not being eligible for a maintenance loan or any grants, but students would still be eligible for a tuition fee loan.

The Boar spoke to several Warwick students about whether they would have been attracted to such a scheme when they were applying for university.

Duncan Hopwood, a second-year Philosophy and Literature student, said he would not have been tempted by lower fees to study in his home town of Nottingham.

“University as an experience encompasses so much more than the study itself, and a mild drop in the total debt I would be in is not enough to sacrifice the value of this,” he said.

“I also think this exemplifies again the London-centric nature of our culture, as this will benefit Londoners the most and will not be as much use to students from rural areas.”

Katherine Price, a third-year English Literature student who comes from Cwmbran, Wales, said the scheme would not be a good deal for her.

“For me, choosing a university was a matter of going to the best possible university for my subject,” she said.

“Although the price cut would certainly have made me reconsider staying at home, and that extra saving would make a great difference, staying at home during university was just something I didn’t want to do anyway and going to my local university [University of Wales, Newport] would have meant prioritising my wallet over the quality of degree I would receive at the end of it.”

Andy King, a first-year Philosophy and Literature student from Maidenhead, said: “No, I wouldn’t go local for a cheaper degree. I’m looking to go into third sector work which means that, likely, I will never pay off more than interest anyway and as such the actual amount of my student loan is, to an extent, irrelevant.”

Mr King said that while some of his friends opted to attend his local University of Reading to save on maintenance loans, this wasn’t an option for him.

“The course wasn’t right, and I wouldn’t have sacrificed, for example, my unwillingness to learn Medieval English to save money that I probably won’t actually pay anyway,” he said.

Alex Pashley, a fourth-year PPE student from Nottingham, said cheaper fees would be a “considerable incentive” to study at home and he “would certainly have considered” studying at his home university.

“However, not everyone is so lucky to live near a good Redbrick,” he added.

The report also calls for international students to be removed from the government’s net migration figures and for post-study work opportunities to be “brought into line with our international competitors”.

A spokesperson for Warwick University said: “Like the rest of the sector, we await the full report with interest”, but he did not go as far as to say that the University would support the proposal.

The Future of Higher Education Commission runs from February 2012 to May 2013 and the upcoming report will be its final.