University finance: In bed with the boss

There can be no doubt that funding cuts are posing a legitimate threat to the higher education sector and all peripheral industries. Westminster is slashing the higher education budget by a third with the unreasonable expectation that universities will continue to function without devastating effects to their students and the quality of teaching. The announcement of these cuts has been met with considerable anger from the academic community, eager to stand their ground and protect the future of their industry and those they represent.

The Guardian has been the recipient of heated letters from umbrella group leaders, student representatives and politicians determined to voice their concerns and plead their cases. If all this correspondence was part of an engaged public debate aiming to limit the damage of the funding crisis, paving the way forward with ideas, compromises and solutions, then it might have some value. Unfortunately, this debate has instead been replaced by motives of self preservation and complaints offering no alternative solutions. Whilst some organisations have taken an explicit stance against the systematic asset stripping of the higher education sector others have been more complacent. There are those bodies who remain unwilling to bite the hand that funds them. Universities Scotland works extensively with the Scottish government to ensure the sector is not neglected, and rightly so. However, their reluctance to to join this debate explicitly is thwarting the wider campaign to secure the quality of research, teaching and students that this country has a proud history of producing.

Universities UK president Professor Steve Smith was quick off the mark to announce that a cut in funds would undermine the government's own strategy of getting us out of a recession by allowing higher education to “adjust to the demands of an increasingly global, knowledge-based economy”.
What the erudite professor neglected to stress is that his umbrella organisation represents the vice-chancellors; the top earners within the academic community. Prof Smith himself earned a respectable $261,000 (including benefits) in 2007-2008, compared to the average lecturer's pay of $38,105. How then can we listen to accusations, justly, directed towards a government showing little tact in their approach to the overhaul of university funding, from a body representing those who consume such a liberal portion of the cake.

The responses from those affected by the cuts, both North and South of the Border have been largely forthcoming. Russell group representatives, the National Union of Students and individual universities have all stood on the soap box and expressed their frustrations without showing that they are willing to offer solutions and compromise. The righteous aspiration to protect higher education and students needs to be accompanied by ta willingness to act as a collective and offer alternatives for a problem that cannot be ignored. Funds are tight and cuts are inevitable. What higher education representatives need to do now is cooperate at a time when the sector needs them to do so more than ever.