‘Perfect storm’ of challenges ahead, warns longest-serving v-c

Declining enrolments and the rising costs of student well-being will create a “perfect storm” of financial challenges for UK universities in the years ahead, a former vice-chancellor has warned while reflecting on his 30 years in the position. 

John Cater, who was until January vice-chancellor of Edge Hill University and the sector’s longest-serving leader, says “the real challenges are only now emerging” in a new paper written for the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi).

Once a small teacher training college named after a local street sign, Cater charts how, under his long leadership, Edge Hill gained university title in 2006, and won the Times Higher Education University of the Year Award in 2014; all while the sector constantly evolved around it. 

However, Cater says a demand problem has arisen over the past decade, driven by the declining popularity of degrees linked to public sector professions such as nursing, as well as changes to student finance that have meant mid-to-lower income earners have to pay back loans for longer. 

He says this means that investing £56 million in a new building is not “something that will be repeated in the immediate term” while universities such as Edge Hill have to build “a much stronger and more widely owned and accepted brand and a more broadly based reputation if it is to sustain market demand, grow and face forwards with certainty”.

The university recently announced that it is looking to cut staff costs by £10 million – one of many institutions suffering in the sector’s current financial crisis. This week Michael Young, currently deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland, was announced as the next pernamanet vice-chancellor of the institution.

As a key provider of medicine, teaching and nursing graduates, Cater says in the report that Edge Hill will benefit if the government can tackle the recruitment and retention challenges blighting the public sector, and make such professions attractive once again.

But in an “increasingly parlous” economy – where health, social care and defence all outflank education in terms of the government’s priorities – “no one is dancing”, even if ministers have changed the mood music. Within education, Cater says that nursery provision or early years schooling or further education would rank above universities.

Other challenges being keenly felt include a broadly static market demand domestically, impacts to international students from restrictions on dependants, and rampant inflation, he says.

If the sector is not able to shore up student numbers in the 2020s, it will be “ill-prepared for the decade that follows”, Cater warns in the report. 

“An age cohort that declines by 14 per cent in seven years, with no signs of a liberalisation of migration policy, could well see a significant decline in undergraduate and postgraduate numbers with no obvious alternative source of significant teaching income.

“Add in the accelerating costs of necessary investment in student health and well-being, and in teaching and learning and operational technology, and a perfect storm is brewing.”

Nick Hillman, Hepi director, said Cater was right to warn policymakers of the obstacles ahead.

“If we are to have improved economic growth, more social mobility and a better-educated workforce, it is regional powerhouses like Edge Hill that will have to do much of the heavy lifting.

“They stand ready to do so – just so long as they are properly resourced and given the space to play to their strengths.”

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com