University Finance with Andrew McGettigan

So let's move on to talking about The things that you thought we had sort of left out of our, was it three episodes we did about the crisis in universities? Six hours.

What did we get wrong?

What did we

miss? The transcript.

Somebody has already quoted, they've cited the transcript somewhere, which they said is 60,000 words.

So that's where you get the listeners.

You're getting a free audio book with us.

Excellent value.

Anyway, so we've got a list actually, haven't we? And I thought one of the first things you mentioned rightly was we really only talked about the situation in England.

I think we might have mentioned in, we might have like just mentioned in passing that the funding situation for HE has been very different in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, but maybe you can tell us a bit about what some of the most significant differences have been.

Well, I think there is no difference.

There is only a UK policy until devolution in 97, 98, when higher education becomes a devolved policy.

And each of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland has responsibility for their own higher education policy.

But the Westminster government has responsibility for English higher education.

And the wild end of reforms that we've lived through, particularly since 2010, that has been in England only.

And I would say in some ways it's best just to be really clear that we're talking about England most of the time and not the rest of the UK.

The thing that most people will be familiar with is that undergraduate tuition fees for Scottish students don't exist.

It is free for Scottish students, whereas English students, it's gonna

cross 10,000 pounds

next year, 27, 28, it will cross 10,000 pounds.

And there is various other complicated factors, but I think the big difference is Scotland has tried to maintain zero tuition fees for its home students.

It also has not seen the market reforms that we've seen in England since 2010.

So if anyone wants to have a bit of an eye-opener, they can log on to the Office for Students website, which is the regulator for England, so it isn't the regulator for any of the other countries, and see their register of higher education providers, there are now over 400 registered providers of all kinds who can access, effectively their students can access the student loan book to study higher courses.

Whereas in Scotland, that hasn't really happened yet.

And there are really still only 20 universities in Scotland, because they've also kept a tighter control on what the title of the university means in Scotland.