Nearly 50 British Universities Deemed at Risk of Failure

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by carlosb, Jul 8, 2007.

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  1. carlosb

    carlosb New Member

    The Chronicle of Higher Education

    http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2642

     
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Except for Buckingham, aren't all UK universities publicly owned?

    -=Steve=-
     
  3. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    As is the case here in the US, British public universities don't receive all of their funds direct from government education budgets. The more research prominent of them get lots of grant funding from both public and private sources.

    And British universities have started the (to them) unprecedented practice of charging students tuition, which is currently capped by law. There's agitation among the more competitive of British schools to raise or eliminate the tuition cap. Unfortunately, that wouldn't help the more obscure and less competitive new universities which apparently are the ones struggling. So perhaps some of these might start emphasizing DL more and increasing enrollments of foreign students who presumably can be charged more.

    My feeling is that Britain faces several difficulties. Its universities often aren't as entrepeneurial as schools in the states, for one thing. When the government pressed them to make money, some of their responses were kind of pathetic. (Liverpool stickers, for example.) The UK doesn't really have a private university sector and they don't have the variety and mass of private funding sources that we enjoy. And British universities all seem to be cut from a single expensive pattern, the research university model. That's not cheap. It's only in the last five years or so that they started creating a few masters level universities, which remains a very controversial move over there.

    I think that Britain would be smart to divide their university sector California-style, with perhaps half of their existing universities deemphasizing research and doctorates (except in a few specialty subjects where special strengths exist) and turning them into American style master's universities.

    Instead of trying to fund more than 100 research universities like they are doing right now, some of which are struggling and rather mediocre, concentate on funding a smaller number more abundantly. California has 36 million people, about 60% of the UK's total population, but the state only (partially) funds 10 University of California research campuses. Several of these are usually found lurking near the top of most university rankings. Perhaps it should be British policy to push a few dozen of their strongest schools into world prominence in a broad array of subjects. Oxbridge and the collective U. of London are already up there and it shouldn't be too hard to pump up places like Manchester and Bristol to UCLA and Berkeley funding levels. Perhaps a few dozen more might evolve into international leaders in specialty areas like engineering, medical sciences or agriculture. Stronger programs will synergize, attract even more funding to say nothing of ambitious young talent that wants to be where all the excitement is.

    I don't see any reason why the UK can't do what California currently does. Californians aren't smarter, they just allocated their resources better in the post-WWII years. Conceivably Britain could elbow California aside and reclaim the scientific pole position that they held before WWII. It might not even be all that hard to do. (I think that California might have peaked and could be ripe to be replaced.)
     
  4. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    +5, Informative

    Wow. Nothing to add, just wanted to say I appreciated the thorough and informative response.

    -=Steve=-
     
  5. fawcettbj

    fawcettbj New Member

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