Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - Catherine Bohart: TL;DR - 4. The UK's uni funding crisis

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

No time to read the news? Catherine Bohart does it for you in TL;DR.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to TLDR, Too Long Didn't Read, the news for those of us who won't stay up for Newsnight but will stay in Acosta if there's a couple having a really juicy round. I'm Catherine Boehart and we're coming to you from the Edinburgh Fringe. If you haven't been, imagine Night of the Living Dead

if the zombies were all stage school kids from Surrey. So in many ways, scarier. I think one of my issues with the news is that it's all told by the wrong people. It's the calm and measured Emma Barnett instead of my Auntie Jerry after two bottles of rose and a difficult divorce. How do we pick which story to give

the full drunk anti-treatment to when there are quite so many? In oh snap news, Ukraine has now invaded Russia. I know right? Biggest plot twist since Harold from Neighbours came back from the dead. Experts say Zelensky's surprise attempt to break the stalemate is brave but hugely risky. Spicing things up in a long-term relationship that isn't working is a gamble.

What we're looking at right now is the geopolitical equivalent of a blindfold and hot wax. They've only gone about 40 kilometres into Russia, so it's less an invasion and more of a staycation. If you want more on this story, check out episode 2 of our series. It's on BBC Sounds. Oi, not now. We've only just started this one. Meanwhile, in nature news, for the first time in 400 years, some beaver kits have been born in the Cairngorms. That's beaver kits as in baby beavers, not as in a kit that lets you build a beaver.

A kit that lets you build a beaver is basically two beavers. Welcome to the BBC, inform, educate, entertain. Historically, beavers were hunted for their fur and scent glands as these were used to make perfume. And who wouldn't want to go out smelling like a beaver? Speaking of intense musks, in US news, Elon Musk has interviewed Donald Trump on X, a sentence so cursed I'm slightly concerned it might summon Satan. A few minutes into the interview, Musk posted that X was under a massive denial of service

attack attempting to knock it offline, which was confusing for him as if he wants to kill a huge social network, he just buys it. So we didn't know what to choose, but then we were saved by the bell. Last week Scotland had SQA results today and now A-level results are in across the rest of the UK. 30 UK universities have reported a financial loss this year and the number is expected to triple in the next few months. The situation is so bad that the university's regulator has been spotted advertising for an accountancy firm

to help manage potential market exits. LAUGHTER I don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds like Aberdeen University is about to go live on a farm. Of course, following results today, lots of students will be looking ahead to university, but 47% of UK universities, including Coventry, Strathclyde and York, are apparently in financial distress. What does this university financial crisis mean? Here to unpack it with me is that rare breed of comic,

A Man Who Went to Cambridge. It's Pierre Novelli. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Pierre is a stand-up comedian who's performing his acclaimed show, Must We?, at the Fringe this month. Incidentally, the same thing locals ask in August every year about the Fringe. LAUGHTER His recently published book, Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things?

The Comedian's Guide to Autism, is available now in all good bookshops and one bad one. Pierre, what's the gossip? Well basically universities aren't getting enough money. They're dependent on tuition fees because government funding and research grants aren't enough but the trouble is they aren't enough students, which is a difficult thing to say at the fringe but it's true. But what does that mean?

Like are people being offered places that won't exist? Well, 50 unis are cutting courses, jobs and having redundancies, and about half our unis are going to have a deficit. A handful might need to be bailed out or they might go bankrupt. I think it just depends on which university and where you are in the country. Some are going to be fine and some might be doomed to become the first ever premier in with a chemistry lab. And a vice chancellor on reception.

What is the worst outcome? Is it Mary Beard on OnlyFans? Because I would subscribe. Yeah, I would as well. They're probably mergers. In the past, that's what's happened, is that universities have sort of become an even greater blob. Right.

That's sort of saved the various students, if not all the academics and stuff. Is that going to end up with horrible composite names for universities? No, universities seem to follow a sort of Pac-Man rule where the one that eats the smaller one gets the name. So then, and I'm sorry to ask an obvious question, but where the hell has all the money gone? Like how is it that every uni student is 50 grand in debt, but universities are saying they can't survive? Are there raccoons on the money tubes?

What's happening? Well there are short-term causes and long-term causes, so obviously in the immediate term the sudden huge rise in inflation has not helped. We've lost a lot of EU funding and there's a lot of uncertainty around the international student market So with inflation if fees had increased in line with consumer prices, they should be about 12 K a year now Not 9 K. Wait, the problem is that the fees aren't high enough the fees somehow not

Inflation takes no prisoners and shrink flation I think could be an answer you knees could offer a three-year degree, but actually only do two and pretend could be an answer. Unis could offer a three-year degree but actually only do two and pretend they have a notice. But this is so confusing because, so, the UK both does and doesn't want foreign students, it feels like. It's a very toxic, mixed relationship. We're sort of, I feel like we're sending them text messages at 2am that are quite needy and then saying things like, you can't stay over. I just, I really want foreign students to find happiness in a country with a more secure attachment style.

Do you know what I mean? The difficulty is that we're very dependent on foreign students because their fees are, if they're in England, capped at something like 50k or, you know, they can pay an enormous amount per year. But they've declined because the government, or at least the last government, changed the visa rules. Nigeria, India and China were three of the big funders of our university system because we can't be bothered. Very kind of them, but now it's all sort of falling to bits. Yikes. So short-term inflation and a lack of university students.

Yep. End of EU funding. I didn't know this. The EU was sending 800 million in funding to UK universities every year, which no one mentioned during the referendum. We had enough of experts and universities were absolutely crawling with them. Ruled over by expert rat kings, which is when several balding experts' ponytails... But has government spending declined? Is that another part of the issue? Fees were brought in in the first place because university enrollment was growing by 5% a year from the 60s, but funding per student halved between 75 and 2000. So you have increasing numbers of people wanting to go to tertiary education but decreasing

amounts of money. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh wow, that's like being the fifth kid in every Irish household, that's a shame. You can have all the hobbies you like, my friend, but they can't cost anything. Okay, but are there solutions if you're in a financial crisis? Well, look, as you say, we are here at the fringe. And for example, thanks to the fringe, Edinburgh University makes about £2.5 million a year.

That was in 2018, so that's probably higher now. So if every university in the country could just establish the world's largest arts festival We could be we could be on the other side of this problem already, okay Failing that there is always the option of hyper wealthy international villains who want to look nice You've got the sackler family they're everywhere though. They're on every campus It feels like but then that it works, you know, because when I see the, you know, the Sackler Library, I don't think about opioid addiction, I think about books. So that's good.

Yeah, it's very effective, I'm the same. It might just be a case of the young will have to bear it again, as it is in this country, with almost every policy decision. Load the young with debt. That just feels so unsustainable. Are we missing an obvious solution? Like why don't universities just sell their campuses to housing developers and then sort of move into the shed like every other public service?

Bit of fun? According to... How's this for a name? Professor Chris Husbands. I assume he's married to Mrs. Wives. Like, what's going on? And according to him, the solution has got to be a hybrid public-private model. Maybe the government partners with private money to fund stuff that they both want, like advanced specialized research, and then maybe the government more directly funds stuff that it wants, like medicine or engineering graduates.

The rest is covered by student loans based around how much it costs to study, say, English literature, e.g. the cost of some books and some hair dye. e.g. the cost of some books and some hair dye. LAUGHTER Then the government gets to dictate what is useful education and what isn't. Yes, it's difficult to figure out what should take the priority because, strategically speaking, we do need more doctors. But we don't seem very interested in doing anything directly about that

other than, fingers crossed, people want to be doctors. LAUGHTER And if they don't, we'll just ethically kidnap doctors from other countries. LAUGHTER Here's what I want to be doctors. And if they don't we'll just ethically kidnap doctors from other countries. Here's what I want to know, student debt, how long would you have to work to pay it off? If you earn 30 to 40 thousand pounds a year it takes about 30 years to repay, but if you earn a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year or more it only takes four years. So if vice-chancellors on average earn about two hundred and seventy two000 pounds a year...

They don't. I hugely recommend becoming a vice chancellor. Twenty-one. Oh, wait. Anyone listening? Yes, that's the average salary, 272,000 pounds a year. I wonder where all the money's gone. Ha-ha-ha.

The answer is that it is still probably worth it, because if you are a graduate, by the age 31, you earn almost 40% more than a non-graduate. You're more likely to be in work, your wages grow enormously faster, so it is worth going to uni, but the sheer level of debt involved and the fear of what would happen if it goes wrong probably does scare people off from poorer backgrounds. You've sort of perfectly backed me into Quandary Corner. And this week, for me, the mystery is what is the point of formal education?

That's right. I'm going to embrace my inner 16-year-old edgelord and say, why do I even have to go to school? Do you think it's something you do to create a better citizen, a better human being? Does it help you with something a bit more existential, like understanding why you're here or why it's worth being a moral person? And look, some degrees are More vocational than others, but it depends what you do

Yeah, if I had studied performance art that would have actually been a more vocational degree than the one I did Because I've ended up doing this But if I ended up doing performance art as a degree and becoming an accountant that it wouldn't have been so it just depends what You end up know, but you would have been the real fun guy in the office, but new becoming an accountant, then it wouldn't have been. So it just depends what you end up doing. No, but you would have been the real fun guy in the office, wouldn't you? Oh. Can you imagine? People can't wait for my casual Friday night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He airs a riot. He's a riot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a reason, though, particularly that you want people to do university degrees. Yes, I have to hold my hands up to a conflict of interest. Yeah. I need as many people as possible to do arts degree so they can get my references. There's quite a lot of stuff in my show that if you don't have at least a smattering of English literature at A level, it's really, it's not going to land. So I need a lot more.

My dream is to have a show so heavy with academic textual references that it's like University Challenge. Where individual audience members have to buzz in to guess why the joke is supposed to be good. So it's, you know, in the crowd just, Derrickson, Christchurch. Is it funny because of, is that a reference to Sisyphus? Yes, correct.

You may laugh now. So I find that very enriching, but you know, if you're a hard-nosed legal firm or engineering firm, you've got no interest in these clowns learning about poems. You just want decent graduates to employ. Thank you very much. It's also a moment's reprieve to study why we are the way we are is sometimes quite useful for most people.

Oh, yes. And if you look at how many people fall for misinformation and AI-generated images, a quick course in Photoshop and GCSE history would do the world a good. You can see that it's not a real picture. So again, we're down to the question of what is a practical skill. But the other problem is, as much as we like to look at Germany and think, we're Germany, we're going to train loads of people for quite nice industrial jobs. Those jobs don't exist here as much as they do in Germany.

You can't just go, well, we've trained 100,000 engineers, so hopefully those jobs will appear any time now. We're a services-led country, so if you really wanted to be brutal about it, we need thousands more doctors, and everyone else can just go work in marketing. We can't need more people in marketing. I'm afraid we're really good at it. Surely.

I know, I know. Well, I guess Great Britain, there you go. There's a good exercise in marketing, am I right? Thank you very much, Pierre. Now it's time for our sidebar. We've heard a lot from the university funding experts today, but now it's time to hear from one of the cash cows themselves. Here, as a woman on her first day of uni, it's Lorna Rose Trean.

Woo! Dear diary, it's me, Linda McCartney. No relation to the sausage. In an absolute slay, I'm on the train up for my first day at university. Yass queen, pop off, uni honey. It's giving degree. Low-key serving midweek naps, beige-based diet, necking posh guys called Rory who grow up to be criminals.

LAUGHTER Or worse, politicians. LAUGHTER I can't wait. I'm so proud of myself for getting into uni. All it took was my smart, big-girl brain and £9,000 a year tuition fees. All my amazing hard work and also the fact

I'm willing to pay £9,000 a year to the university, no questions asked, take it, you want it, I'll give it. All my dedication to reading that one Socrates quote, which I lifted and then put into my UCAS personal statement. And also my sheer willingness and determination to pay 9,000 pounds a year in fees to the university. And thank goodness I was applying in an era of positive discrimination,

being actively supported because I ticked a lot of boxes. I ticked the dyspraxic box, but that was by accident. I ticked the bisexual box twice. And I ticked the new box, which they added, that said, will you give us loads of money, please? We need the money too. I thought it was a bit weird that the vice chancellor bought a chip and pin machine to the interview.

But hey, I guess that's part of the whole university experience, the experience of paying 9,000 pounds a year plus interest. Yes! Although, diary, as I stare out of the window onto the rolling hills of Coventry, my mind does wander. Also, I'm beginning to think about all the things I could have bought with three times 9,000 pounds, which equals 27,000 pounds, which I just did in my head.

I could have, for example, rented a flat at the Edinburgh Fringe for one night. I could have bought a third-hand Lamborghini or ten Fredos. I love Fredos. Shut up, Linda. You can buy Freddo's when you've graduated and got a job. If I get a job. Will I get a job? What if robots steal it like in Wally? No, no, stop it, Linda.

You silly sausage. Stop thinking about it. Just focus on potato smileys for every meal and Rory's dad's wind farm. That's better. It's all worth it. Just think of the windmill blades going round and round and round. Just like Rory's dad's hands on your back for the first time that you meet his parents. Is it friendly or is it sexual? Who cares?

He's rich and posh. And hopefully really guilty about it, so he'll pay off my loan. Hooray! And if it all else fails, I could always sell my hair, or maybe I could sell my underwear online. No, that's a pants idea.

No, that's a pants idea. I could donate my eggs, they're free range. Years of undisturbed roaming in my fallopian tubes. Well, until Rory gets his way. These are going to be the best days of my life. Wait, what's this? Oh, an email. Liverchester University has now closed due to funding cuts. No refunds.

Come on, Linda, pull yourself together, Queen. You can turn this around. This is your chance to prove you're a boss bitch solopreneur like Beyonce or Alan Sugar. LAUGHTER Hang on, diary, bear with me. Does anybody on this train want a single ticket from Birmingham to Liverchester?

I'll start the bidding at £9,000. It's still cheaper than train line. Thank you so much, Lorna Rose Train, everybody! If you like that, check out Lorna's show, Time of the Week, on BBC Sands. We've learned so much about this topic, yet my interest level is still higher than that on a student loan. Thankfully, we've got an expert to show us the way. Please welcome James McAnaney, everybody. James is a freelance journalist, the educational writer for The Herald,

and a former schoolteacher and college lecturer. How the hell are you? Alright, I'm enjoying being the token Glaswegian at the Edinburgh Festival. Welcome. James, aside from wearing low-rise jeans and saying things like iconic, what's going on with young people leaving school? Are they mostly going to university or do we just hear more about university band leavers in the media for some reason I can't possibly think of. Yes, a large number go to university these days. It depends which data set you look at because they're all shambles and there's not a single one for the whole UK. As for

why you might hear more about people going to university than say, I don't know, working class kids going to college or poor kids going to work. I can't possibly imagine what that might be in front of a Radio 4 audience. So the data's not great? It's not brilliant and it varies across, so I could give you a bunch of data from Scotland or you can have data from England and Wales that's kind of similar but a wee bit different or you can have data from Northern Ireland that's quite like the Scotland data but a

wee bit different and measured at a different time, so we don't actually have any particular idea what's going on. I finally think I get it when English people zone out when I'm trying to explain Northern Irish history. No, I do get it, because in Ireland, we actually have something similar. We also have three sort of options,

university, dairy farming, or the priesthood. Is there the same funding crisis across the board in terms of their tertiary education opportunities or alternatives? It's probably worse actually for the non university. Why? Because nobody cares about colleges because colleges are for other people's children. I'm being a bit flippant here, but I would generally say that yeah, that is one of the issues that the people who run Scotland, people who run countries like this one

are broadly speaking not people who've been through the kind of experiences of the people who then just get battered all the time, as I say, by every funding cut going. Yeah, and listen, I get it. We all have blind spots. I don't date men, so I don't think about men. Um, like not part of my world, but I, but how do I get it, we all have blind spots. I don't date men, so I don't think about men. Like, not part of my world. But how do we get the political class to care

about non-university alternatives? How do you make the sociopaths care about other people? I don't know. Is there a specifically distinct approach that seems to be coming out of a Labour government towards tertiary education? I mean it's only been a few weeks. Keir Starmer's not had time for his U-turn yet. But in fairness to the Labour government, and to be, and again this is probably an important point if we're sitting here talking about higher education, you've got a UK government that's not in charge of UK higher education. There's no such thing as the UK education system. Scotland's completely separate. What happens in Northern Ireland's always different. Labour's view on post-16

education so far seems to be we are going to stop and we are going to review all of this. I suspect what they might find is kind of like the Chancellor did when she actually opened up the books and started looking that actually things are perhaps worse than they think they are just now. Wow, what a harrowing tale. Yeah, I'm not the guy for happy stories. No, I know, we invited a Scott. So the thing is, how do you improve equality in education overall?

Because it seems like there's this huge lack of equality at the top, and indeed at every level. There's still an ironclad link between backgrounds and education outcomes. It's something I'm banging on about all the time. But it is absolutely the case that you can change things and make things better. So I'm a start at the beginning kind of guy. I don't really think that you fix the cake you're baking just before you take it out of the oven, at which point you realise you've made a mess of the ingredients. I tend to think it's probably best doing it when you're mixing it. But you could totally, massively reform the whole early years framework.

You could make things so much better for working parents and for kids. What does that look like? Because obviously, I mean, do we have to do the same thing as universities get foreign toddlers in, like to fund the... Yes. You could get like, are there oil tycoon toddlers? Sort of oily toddlers? I don't know. We're sort of talking about education as a presumed right. Do you think third level education is one?

Yes. I should probably clarify at this point I was a college lecturer before my current job as a journalist so that perhaps colours that a little bit. But sometimes when people provide a service they actually think people should have to pay loads for it. It's nice that you think it should be one that everybody has access to. I wasn't that good so there's no point in paying. But I've always kind of felt that lifelong learning I think is the phrase that I prefer and I've always felt that that's something that should be a right. It's one of these

things that, I mean no country's perfect but you can look around the world at different countries this comes up with the early years thing as well where you can find yourself looking going like what is it that's so rubbish about Britain that we can't have some of the very good things that seem to exist in other places and countries that I keep getting told aren't as rich as us and aren't as developed or whatever. That is very interesting so it's definitely it's not something that we have to hypothesise or imagine really. We can look left and right and see that it's a positive. There's lots of other examples of it.

There's examples of whole different approaches within the UK. You know, like you're talking about the students in England leaving university with tens of thousands of pounds a day. I didn't, because I'm Scottish and that would be ridiculous. You know, so there's all different ways. But when English students come here, they pay the full... Yes, yes, they do. And that's very important to the accountants in the universities up here. Yes, and in that particular resource for the Scottish universities.

But yes, some people just don't think education is right. Some people don't think housing is right or, you know, breathing and stuff. Maybe what you're getting at though is that one of the things you sometimes hear, particularly with university education, is that, listen, too many people go to university, it's far too high, it's a waste of time, it's a waste of money, fewer people should be going to university. The thing is, almost every single time you hear this, if you look at the person saying it, you can just tell this is somebody who's talking about other people's children. OK, brilliant. Thank you, James.

Now it's time to open the floor and let the nerdiest students in our class ask their questions. Yes, we have one over here immediately. Thank you. Hello, what's your name? Hi, I'm Laura. Just wondering, you said that Edinburgh University makes 2.5 million from the free... Yes, that's stuck in my mind too, Laura. Um, where does that money go and what do they do with all the tuition fees? I'm not sure what Edinburgh University does do with it, but I think one of the problems with university funding generally is that back when borrowing money was basically free,

when interest rates were zero, some universities borrowed a responsible amount of money to expand a bit, and some universities went absolutely ape and borrowed loads of money and expanded with the expectation that there's no way the supply of Chinese, Indian and Nigerian students will ever dry up. And then it has. Any other questions? Yes, straight up at the back. That person's top of the class.

Hello, what's your name? Hi, I'm Finn. Is there a specific other country's model out there that we can potentially use as something to work towards in the long-term future? I'm an education journalist, so at some point in any given event, I always have to talk about Finland.

Them's very much the rules. Finland's approach to its earlier system is fascinating. The way it treats teachers is marvelous. Estonia has got a really interesting story to tell about educational development kind of post-Soviet Union. Poland doesn't really get the credit it deserves either in terms of how it's developed.

There's some interesting things happening in a couple of African countries actually these days. So there's an awful lot. One of the mistakes, though, that's made in education policy, maybe one of the most common mistakes, is the idea that something has happened in a place, and therefore, this is now going to become a solution. There's also solutions from other countries

that I don't think the UK would ever culturally accept. So for example, in Germany, you have a triple-tiered system of secondary education. You have normal school. If you're particularly nerdy, you get sent to a gymnasium. If you're sort of academic, if you're not particularly academic but you're interested in becoming a skilled laborer or a highly skilled craftsman or something, they send you to Hauptschule.

And then that affects the rest of your life. So we can have a German-style education system, but we're going to have to get a lot meaner and a lot more into streaming kids but we're going to have to get a lot meaner and a lot more into streaming kids when they're 13. Okay, well thank you so much, James. Give it up for James Buckanany, everybody. So Pierre, at the end of the story, what have we learned? Do you have a hero of the week?

I do. Go on. I have a hero. A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that there is someone out there in the UK who personally has student debt of more than 230,000 pounds. No! I know.

A lone hero propping up an entire department. Or one vice chancellor. Vice chancellor who works 85% of the time, willing to sacrifice their credit score in their future for the good of the education system of this country, and if every young person did the same, then there would be no funding crisis. You're right. A lesson for us all. That's the solution.

Yes. So listen, do you have any predictions? It will be bad. Yeah. But then it will be good again. And then it will be bad again. And then it will be good. You see where I'm going.

Yeah, I do, I do. OK, well, brilliant. Thank you so much. Folks, this has been TLDR, and here ends today's lecture. Hope you enjoyed it. That'll be 40 grand. Woo! endeth today's lecture. Hope you enjoyed it, that'll be 40 grand. TLDR was written and hosted by Catherine Bohard with Pierre Novelli, Lorna Rose Trean and

James McAneen. It was also written by Sarah Campbell, Ellen Robertson and Madeleine Brettingham. The producer was Victoria Lloyd. It was a Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4, 11 Minutes Dead, a paranormal thriller about near-death experience. We once believed death occurred at the exact moment the heart stopped beating. Sammy, where are you going? We now know this is not true. You don't deserve a daughter, so I will come and take her away.