University degrees ‘should be reduced to two years’
UNIVERSITY DEGREES should be cut to two years to ease the debt burden on students, a report backed by two former Cabinet Ministers has recommended.
Tory Owen Paterson and former Labour Minister Lord Adonis accused universities of acting “like a cartel” to block reforms to the tuition fees regime, allowing them to charge the maximum £9,250 a year.
The report, by Mr Paterson’s UK2020 think-tank, claimed the biggest winners from the current system had been university vicechancellors, whose pay and perks now average almost £280,000.
In a joint foreword to the report, Mr Paterson and Lord Adonis backed the original concept of charging tuition fees, saying they were meant to put universities on a more independent financial footing.
In return, universities were supposed to deliver better teaching, innovate and compete.
But “while the universities persuaded government to raise fees substantially, they acted like a cartel to block the progress we all hoped for”.
“There is virtually no variation in the pricing of degrees nor innovation in the model of how they are delivered,” the ex-Ministers said.
“For universities, growing the quantity of students and the money they get from them appear to be the key objectives – at the expense of quality.”
The report said total student debt would reach £1 trillion in cash terms by the 2040s, with the taxpayer picking up the bill for unpaid loans “with universities bearing none of the risk, even if they have overpriced their degrees”.
Student debt “has the potential to turn into a kind of Ponzi scheme”, the report warned.
English students are “the most indebted in the world”, owing on average £50,000 by the time they graduate – although the report acknowledged that the system meant no upfront fees and lower repayments than the old regime.