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While the University of Oxford is celebrating a record-breaking ninth year at the top of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the warning signs for the UK sector more broadly are clear for all to see.
With the value of long-frozen tuition fees in England heavily eroded by inflation, margins on teaching domestic students are increasingly thin or even non-existent. And at the same time, a volatile international recruitment market is making it harder than ever for institutions to cross-subsidise their research activities, which have been underfunded for even longer than teaching.
Irene Tracey, Oxford’s vice-chancellor, said she shared concerns about these challenges but was pleased to see growing recognition of the sector’s funding crisis.
“It’s been good to see the level of engagement from the media and from politicians and society, that there is an awareness now that this is a real problem,” Professor Tracey told Times Higher Education. “And, therefore, we’ve got to think, nationally, how do we want to address that going forward?”
As a first priority, many in the sector want a commitment from the new Labour government in Westminster that it will bail out any universities facing bankruptcy, fearing a risk of contagion across the UK if an institution was allowed to go to the wall.
Asked whether she agreed, Professor Tracey, who has led Oxford since January 2023, said it was “not for me to answer”.
“It would depend on which one it was, what was the context, what were the circumstances, you know, what was the decision point around what we felt the contribution of that was in terms of other things you want to do,” she said.
This reflects Professor Tracey’s broader view on the sector crisis: “Money is a solution, but the sector also has to challenge itself,” which means cutting costs and being more efficient, she said.
Professor Tracey did not expect an increase in tuition fees – “the solutions from the government, I think, will be limited” – but argued that ministers could help by reducing the administrative burden placed on universities. “Broadly, bureaucracy, which is very time-consuming. It’s a lot of manual effort, manual time. This is all costly,” she said.
It would help, she said, if policymakers fully realised what an asset the UK higher education sector was. “We often remind our politicians: people would bite your hand off to have this higher education sector.”
Oxford is not struggling financially like many other UK universities, thanks largely to the philanthropy of alumni, and Professor Tracey suggested that other institutions could do more to tap into this. “We don’t have the philanthropic culture of giving back to universities the way you do in the US, unless it’s Oxford and Cambridge and a few others. That’s something we could probably work on as another lever for people [leading universities]; it’s people just giving back a bit to help their old alma mater.”
While Oxford continues to enjoy a stellar reputation, the latest THE rankings show that on average the UK sector is declining in reputation across teaching and research, and Professor Tracey expressed concern that this “matters more than maybe people realise”.
“We’ve got to be really mindful of that and mindful of the decisions that need to be taken now in order to address that slippage,” she said, adding that it was important that the UK “has a good slug of our universities in that top batch” of global league tables.
After Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, “people globally are still sort of working out where we are”, Professor Tracey suggested. “We need to help shape what that identity looks like, so that Britain is really perceived as an attractive place to come and do your learning and potentially stay or come and do your great research and live and stay here because you want to.”
She believes the reputation of the UK sector as a whole impacts Oxford: “If we’re strong, the sector’s strong. If the sector’s strong, we’re strong. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.”
When it comes to attracting global talent, Professor Tracey said she shared the concerns of many in the sector about the ban on most international students bringing dependants with them to the UK while they study, brought in under the former Conservative government. Student visa applications have fallen sharply since the bar came into force this January.
She pointed out that this policy disproportionately impacted women, who were more likely to have caring responsibilities. “It’s a concern not just because of the finances. It’s a concern because you’re losing talent at the end of the day,” she added.
“You’re looking for the best of the best of the world to come in and potentially be your pipeline for your engine room of discovery. And it’s a global market you want to tap into. Any business in Britain will want to have the best people to come and work for them, so why would we be held to a different level?”
