In a special meeting of Academic Board on 16 Decem- ber 2010 Provost Prof Malcolm Grant delivered a presentation that predicted a £100m funding shortfall based on our current economic model. The report explained the potential impact of government cuts in detail, speculating on UCL’s future in more detail than ever before.
In June last year, UCL was pleased to announce a £30m budget surplus for the financial year 2009-10. The management heralded the an- nouncement as proof that UCL had finally achieved the finan- cial performance level required by the Higher Education Fund- ing Council (HEFCE). How- ever, following recent uni- versity funding cuts made by the coalition government, the university’s finances look no- where near as secure as such figures would have you believe.
The report predicts a funding shortfall of £100m in the year 2014-15, based upon the following criteria:
A 70% cut to the HEFCE Teaching Grant which will lose UCL £40m p.a. for un- dergraduate teaching and £8m p.a. for postgraduate teaching
Research funding reduc- tion and efficiency savings that will cost UCL £15m p.a.
Increased pay costs (including pension increases) that will cost UCL £12m p.a.
Non-pay increases (including the rise in VAT) that will lose £5m p.a.
A cut in capital fund- ing (through the HEFCE Capi- tal Investment Framework) that will cost UCL £20m p.a.
In the next year, further eco- nomic problems will stem from the fact that cuts to the Teaching Grant and increased revenue from tuition fees will not be synchronised: UCL will face a gap in which govern- ment money is not coming in from either revenue source. The figures also demonstrate that the increased under- graduate tuition fees will not cover this shortfall. The re- port proposes three possible methods to increase revenue:
£43m by raising under- graduate tuition fees to the max- imum allowed £9,000 per year
£10m by raising all UK and EU postgradu- ate fees to £10,000 per year.
£12m by raising all in- ternational student fees by 15%
These figures sug- gest alarming fee increases on a scale that the government has frequently denied would be necessary for universities to survive. If imposed, the lat- ter two proposals would also contradict Grant’s most recent Student Newsletter in which he wrote that fee increases ‘apply only to UK and EU undergrad- uate students, not to postgrad- uates or international students’.
Most worryingly of all, these fee increases would not even manage to plug the gap in funding. Even with all three extreme measures imposed, UCL would still face a short- fall of £35m. Such a gap rep- resents either a cut in staffing by 16% or a cut in the univer- sity’s total expenditure of 10%.
Council minutes indi- cate that in order to make fur- ther cuts, UCL will ‘consider the scope for reducing four-year undergraduate degrees to three years’. The courses that may be considered are not specified.
This is speculation but it demonstrates the immense financial uncertainty that UCL is currently facing. The fact that they were presented by the Provost at a special meet- ing of a senior UCL commit- tee also suggests how seriously management is taking them.
When The Cheese Grater approached UCL man- agement for further explana- tion of these figures, none was offered. Vice-Provosts Mi- chael Worton and Rex Knight declined to comment, while Grant remained unresponsive despite repeated attempts to contact him. Management has been strangely reluctant to of- fer any real explanation to UCL students about these cuts.
Conspicuously, less than three days after The Cheese Grater contacted UCL management about these fig- ures, the UCL web page on which they were available had disappeared. The website link previously used to access them now forwards users to another UCL page. Despite the minutes having been publically avail- able just last week, we were told that we were not autho- rised to access the resources.
Management’s silence begs the question as to why they have not made more concerted efforts to raise awareness about how badly universities will be affected by the cuts. It seems strange to many students that they refused to publically con- demn higher education cuts last year despite repeated calls to do so by the UCL Occupation.
In an interview with Pi Newspaper this month, Grant mentioned that on his ‘gloomiest days’ he could ‘picture [UCL] £100m down a year gross by 2014/15’. This is not just a daydream of Grant’s but a realistic pos- sibility for the future of UCL.