Neither private sector nor state want to pay for higher education – so who will?
The
economy, business and industry benefit from a thriving university
sector – yet tax-avoiding companies allow it to wither, says Peter Scott
Business secretary
Vince Cable leaving No 10 Downing Street before George Osborne delivered
the spending review. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Vince Cable
appears to have fought to defend his budget at the Department for
Busin
ess, Innovation and Skills in last week's spending review. The bulk of BIS's budget is spending on higher and further education (though you could never tell from the department's title).
In the fog of statistics following any spending review the truth is – deliberately? – difficult to discern. The spin is always "it could have been worse: you should have seen the Treasury's opening shot". But arguing the toss with selective statistics is a waste of time. The overall trajectory of government spending is clear: sharply downwards.
First, the deficit – all Labour's fault – must be cut. Next, the state has to be shrunk according to the idiot "private-good, public-bad" mantra. Finally, cuts have to fall on "unprotected" areas … like higher education!
So Cable deserves only the faintest praise because he is a senior member of a government set on this destructive course. All that can be said in his defence is that he is better than Michael Gove, who would love to get his hands on universities and inflict on them the same neo-Victorian pastiche policies he is imposing on schools.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. The Finns pay more so they have better schools; the Americans pay more so they have better universities. But in England – let's get used to exempting the canny Scots – both the government and industry are in denial.
Politicians believe if you juggle with accounting smoke-and-mirrors rules and blather on about back-office cuts, resources will miraculously appear and/or go further. They struggle to "sell" the student loans book to any bank willing to take a no-risk publicly guaranteed "liability" – so they might as well not have bothered. They cut research funding and pretend they haven't because it is now only going to go to "world-class" research – as if a healthy research system didn't need a diverse ecology.
The much lauded private sector is even worse. Politicians may delude themselves, but big corporations are all too hard-headed. Through tax avoidance, they actively erode the tax base. Nearly all the burden of training future skilled professionals has to be borne by this shrinking tax base. Private healthcare organisations do not train doctors; publicly funded medical schools in universities do. Cutting-edge technology firms rely on scientists and engineers produced by the same universities. But they are too busy avoiding tax to notice – or perhaps to care. After all, short-term share prices, dividends and bonuses are what matters. In a low-tax small-state neoliberal world no one seems to want to pay – governments or markets.
The Browne report on fees and funding talked of creating a "sustainable" higher education system. There are frequent calls that universities must not "over-trade" in research by charging less than the full costs of projects. But the same thrusting business types pretend it can become self-sustaining through student fees (for teaching) and industrial support (for research). Publicly funded universities can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Under particular threat is our research base. If and when a genuine fees market emerges, students will no longer buy the line their fees must subsidise research. Absentee professors, however starry, cannot "enhance" their experience.
The UK branch offices of offshore tax-avoiding multinationals have no interest in subsidising university research. Our boom (and bust) industries, banking, financial services and property speculation don't think they need any research anyway, beyond the latest IT packages.
But there is a wider global problem lurking here. The world's scientific base is still largely located in the west. There are brilliant Chinese and Indian scientists, but many work in US or European universities. This base has been built largely with public resources, but is now being rapidly eroded by neoliberal dogma.
It gets worse. The public funding of science (and scholarship), the idea of the public good, the independence of research, the critical values of the Enlightenment – all are bound together in a delicate web. So much more is at stake than pounds, dollars or euros. It's our soul.
Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education
ess, Innovation and Skills in last week's spending review. The bulk of BIS's budget is spending on higher and further education (though you could never tell from the department's title).
In the fog of statistics following any spending review the truth is – deliberately? – difficult to discern. The spin is always "it could have been worse: you should have seen the Treasury's opening shot". But arguing the toss with selective statistics is a waste of time. The overall trajectory of government spending is clear: sharply downwards.
First, the deficit – all Labour's fault – must be cut. Next, the state has to be shrunk according to the idiot "private-good, public-bad" mantra. Finally, cuts have to fall on "unprotected" areas … like higher education!
So Cable deserves only the faintest praise because he is a senior member of a government set on this destructive course. All that can be said in his defence is that he is better than Michael Gove, who would love to get his hands on universities and inflict on them the same neo-Victorian pastiche policies he is imposing on schools.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. The Finns pay more so they have better schools; the Americans pay more so they have better universities. But in England – let's get used to exempting the canny Scots – both the government and industry are in denial.
Politicians believe if you juggle with accounting smoke-and-mirrors rules and blather on about back-office cuts, resources will miraculously appear and/or go further. They struggle to "sell" the student loans book to any bank willing to take a no-risk publicly guaranteed "liability" – so they might as well not have bothered. They cut research funding and pretend they haven't because it is now only going to go to "world-class" research – as if a healthy research system didn't need a diverse ecology.
The much lauded private sector is even worse. Politicians may delude themselves, but big corporations are all too hard-headed. Through tax avoidance, they actively erode the tax base. Nearly all the burden of training future skilled professionals has to be borne by this shrinking tax base. Private healthcare organisations do not train doctors; publicly funded medical schools in universities do. Cutting-edge technology firms rely on scientists and engineers produced by the same universities. But they are too busy avoiding tax to notice – or perhaps to care. After all, short-term share prices, dividends and bonuses are what matters. In a low-tax small-state neoliberal world no one seems to want to pay – governments or markets.
The Browne report on fees and funding talked of creating a "sustainable" higher education system. There are frequent calls that universities must not "over-trade" in research by charging less than the full costs of projects. But the same thrusting business types pretend it can become self-sustaining through student fees (for teaching) and industrial support (for research). Publicly funded universities can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Under particular threat is our research base. If and when a genuine fees market emerges, students will no longer buy the line their fees must subsidise research. Absentee professors, however starry, cannot "enhance" their experience.
The UK branch offices of offshore tax-avoiding multinationals have no interest in subsidising university research. Our boom (and bust) industries, banking, financial services and property speculation don't think they need any research anyway, beyond the latest IT packages.
But there is a wider global problem lurking here. The world's scientific base is still largely located in the west. There are brilliant Chinese and Indian scientists, but many work in US or European universities. This base has been built largely with public resources, but is now being rapidly eroded by neoliberal dogma.
It gets worse. The public funding of science (and scholarship), the idea of the public good, the independence of research, the critical values of the Enlightenment – all are bound together in a delicate web. So much more is at stake than pounds, dollars or euros. It's our soul.
Peter Scott is professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education
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