Class size increases ‘inevitable’ amid financial crisis, say v-cs

Vice-chancellors believe the UK’s current “generous” staff-student ratios will have to rise as financial issues leave institutions relying on dwindling resources, but lecturers say their workloads are already too stretched.

Earlier this month a leaked document showed that Cardiff University – which has put 400 academics at risk of redundancy – was looking to increase class sizes due to “a simple equation of affordability”, something which it said the rest of the sector would also be considering.

In the most extreme case, Cardiff will assign one academic to 24 students in its School of Global Humanities, sparking outrage from staff members who say that workloads and student experience will be impacted.

Currently Cardiff has just under 15 students per staff member on average, according to data submitted to Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The figures show ratios across major universities range from 10 or 11 to one at elite institutions such as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to nearly 27 to one at the University of Bedfordshire.

David Maguire, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, said that Cardiff will not be alone in exploring larger class sizes, and it was “inevitable” that staff-student ratios will rise. He described it as “one of the easiest ways to improve efficiency and boost productivity”. 

“I think every university is contemplating easing the numbers up,” he said, adding: “We’re certainly doing that at UEA, as are others around the sector.”

He said it is “not uncommon now” to see class sizes of 20 to one, “certainly in areas outside the sciences, that’s fairly normal”.

Class sizes can vary massively depending on the course, with humanities and social science courses typically having larger classes than those seen in medical and lab-based courses.

Maguire said medical courses in particular needed to meet conditions set as part of accreditation from the General Medical Council that states class sizes can’t exceed certain parameters.

But he said “one to 15 is not uncommon” in lab and studio-based subjects, while in social sciences, businesses and the more classroom-based subjects, “one to 20 or 25 – which is what Cardiff was suggesting – I think is perfectly reasonable”. 

David Bell, vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland, said that if universities were doing effective assessments when conducting staff cuts, it did not necessarily have to result in greater class sizes.

“It’s probably a bit more subtle than just saying ‘we’re about to see the degeneration of staff student ratios’, because if you’re targeting the deductions in areas where you’ve actually lost quite a lot of students, you might actually still be taking the same staff-student ratios.”

However, he said that “absolutely nothing is off the table” as universities navigate the financial crisis, adding “every university, I’m sure, will be going through this and deciding what they have to do that’s best for their circumstances”.

Both vice-chancellors acknowledged that staff-student ratios in the UK are “more generous” – in Bell’s words – than other parts of the world. Maguire noted that “the UK is slightly unusual in having a relatively small number of students to a member of staff than, for example, in the United States or in Australia” but said “a consequence of that is that we have one of the highest quality systems internationally because we can undertake intensive, research-led pedagogy”. 

Any increase in the number of students staff have to teach is likely to exacerbate concerns about deteriorating working conditions and unmanageable workloads. Renata Medeiros Mirra, a lecturer in medical statistics at Cardiff and chair of its University and College Union branch, said that the School of Biosciences had already grown from accepting around 100 students a year to around nearly 400, without a similar increase in staff.

She said this “doubled my workload” as lecture theatres did not accommodate that many students, meaning “most lectures had to be given twice”.

The impact goes further than on individual staff members and the student experience, said Richard Watermeyer, professor of education at the University of Bristol, who feared a “further differentiation and separation between the super elite providers” and the rest.  

Increasing class sizes was “bound to” exacerbate the “gulf” between universities that are forced to increase student ratios, and those that don’t, he said.

“Those with the financial resolve and more financial resilience may be able to therefore offer something a little bit different and maintain that USP of having smaller class sizes…There’s a reason why Oxford and Cambridge operate a tutorial system which is esteemed around the world, because it is deemed to be the best.”

He said that he didn’t accept comparisons to the US and Australia, and said “these are a means to easily justify the ratio difference”.

“So much of this comes down to a broken model. It just doesn't work,” he said. “I think there’s a really significant question in terms of how we conceive of universities. Are we still striving for that kind of society model? Are we really talking about equitable participation? Or are we actually seeing a nuclear shift back to a more elitist model of higher education? I can’t help but think maybe that’s where we’re going.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com