Fears of mass university collapse, with 40% of institutions forecast to run deficits this year

There are fears of a potential collapse in higher education, after a report by the Office for Students (OfS) warned that 40% of English universities are now running deficits.

In a report published 16 May, the education watchdog voiced concerns that an overreliance on international students to plug funding shortfalls could leave England’s higher education institutions exposed if this intake began to fall. A “reasonable worst-case scenario”, it said, could see four out of five universities losing money by 2027.

Susan Lapworth, OfS Chief Executive, declared that English universities “will need to make significant changes to their funding model in the near future to avoid facing a material risk of closure.” She called the report a “signal” to these institutions to question the future state of student recruitment, as current assumptions “are just not credible”.

Already, figures compiled by the University and College Union (UCU) show that 60 British universities are currently taking redundancy measures, totalling over a 1/3 of Britain’s higher education institutions. The union’s General Secretary, Jo Grady, urged that: “The funding model for higher education is broken, and needs radical change to put the sector on a firm financial footing.”