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Wednesday, Feb 09, 2005

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Cash for class at Oxbridge

By Hasan Suroor

Plans by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to cut down undergraduate places for domestic students and increase the intake of foreign candidates who pay more have stirred a controversry.

STUDENT PLACES in two of the world's most famous universities are up for grabs for anyone with deep pockets and a semblance of academic promise. Forget those arcane admission procedures and old-fashioned insistence on magic grades. Hard cash will do, thank you.

Children of the Third World elite should rejoice, for it is they who are going to benefit from the proposals being considered by universities of Oxford and Cambridge to aggressively target fee-paying overseas students to overcome a deepening financial crisis as a result of more than 20 years of under-funding. A legacy of Thatcherite era, it has continued under New Labour despite its mantra of "education, education and education."

The two universities are so deep in the red that there are moves to cut down undergraduate places for domestic students and increase the intake of lucrative foreign candidates. Figures released by Cambridge University show that it ran up a deficit of £10.5 million last year despite earnings from its money-spinning school examinations work, and Oxford was kept afloat almost entirely by income from the Oxford University Press.

With the Government not willing either to substantially increase funding or allow universities to hike tuition fees for fear of a middle-class backlash, they are under pressure to raise their own resources and their only hope lies in people who would cough up anything for a British degree — namely students from, mostly, former British colonies. And this is how it works: while British and European Union students pay a little over £1,000 a year, others pay up to anything between £8,000 and £20,000 for the same courses and together contribute more than £10 billion pounds a year to British universities.

Currently, the proportion of foreign undergraduates, especially in elite universities, is less than 10 per cent. And yet they earn more from overseas students than from British and EU scholars put together. Cambridge earned £24.6 million in fee alone from foreign scholars last year as against £20.3 million from U.K. and EU students, though the overseas component accounted for only 17 per cent of its total undergraduate and postgraduate strength.

No wonder then that foreign students are regarded as cash cows waiting to be milked. Oxford has already announced that it intends to increase the strength of overseas undergraduates from eight per cent to 15 per cent while cutting down on places for home students by at least 1,000, and Cambridge is debating the issue. Though it says it has no plans to reduce seats for domestic students, the issue of widening access to foreign students is very much at the heart of current discussions.

"The university has set up a working party to look into the whole question of international student recruitment and support, and their findings will feed into what is to become a wider discussion of the future nature, size and balance of the university's student population," according to a Cambridge university spokesperson.

The fact is that almost every single British university, from the "Ivy League" downwards, is busy wooing foreign students amid reports of home candidates being, often, rejected in favour of cash-rich overseas applicants even when they have better grades. In the entire debate on foreign students things like academic excellence and merit are never mentioned allowing an impression to gain ground that all that universities want is money.

Recently, a senior official of the prestigious Imperial College, London, was reported as justifying its plans to offer half its places to foreign students by the end of the decade solely on the ground that "overseas students pay the full economic cost of their education, unlike British and European students." And, to think that the very same universities kicked up a huge row last year when the Government suggested that they take more students from state schools as part of its efforts to widen access to higher education. They argued that it would bring down standards, and Oxford arrogantly told the Government to take its "tanks off Oxford lawns" saying universities were "not laboratories for social engineering."

Critics warn that an indiscriminate recruitment of foreign students simply as a means of chasing money could lead to British degrees being devalued as word gets round that they can be "bought." One distinguished Cambridge academic has described what is going on as a "slow corruption of our universities as heads of departments are pushed by reduced budgets into lowering standards" for foreign students. "Until 10 years ago, British education was seen as the gold standard around the world and our institutions and examinations as incorruptible," said the historian, David Starkey, in a newspaper interview warning that there was a risk of "killing the goose that laid the golden egg."

Oxford and Cambridge have publicly spoken about the seriousness of the financial mess they are in, and have warned that they cannot remain internationally competitive unless funding improves.

The gap between what these universities spend on an undergraduate and what they get is said to be so wide (Oxford is estimated to lose £9,000 per undergraduate every year) that it can be sustained only at the cost of compromising their status as world-class universities. Already, research standards, academic salaries and related facilities at most British universities are way behind their affluent American counterparts. There is talk of "brain drain" as institutions of higher education in Britain struggle to attract — and retain — good academics in a climate of unattractive salaries and indifferent research and promotion prospects.

Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University, has said that British universities are running out of "petrol" and cannot stay in the race for excellence for too long. "We are still in the race, but there is not much petrol left in the tank," he has said. Especially continuing low pay could mean that "Oxford will have far fewer British academic staff" in the long-term, he warned.

Some leading universities, including Oxford, have threatened to break out of state control altogether and go private so that they are free to set their own fee and salary regime. However, this is unlikely to happen because the idea of education as a "social good" is still too deep-rooted in Britain to allow U.S.-style free-market in universities. Privatisation of higher education, which would inevitably restrict access only to the rich, goes against the grain of European "values" that regard education as a contribution to society rather than as a means of individual advancement. Though alternative viewpoints have started to emerge, the overwhelming opinion still favours universal free education right up to the degree level and if there is one issue on which a 21st century version of "people's revolt" can still be organised in Britain it is on the question of "free" public services such as education and health.

It is widely acknowledged that privatisation is not a realistic option — not the least because Government patronage, which comes in many other forms than simply funding, matters to the university Establishment. Mr. Patten, a strong critic of state control, rejects privatisation as a solution despite what he calls the Government's "meanness."

"I know there are those who think that our (Oxford's) independence and strength can only be assured if we choose to go completely private, rejecting support from the taxpayer. I do not agree with that — despite the Government's provocative tendency to mix meanness with interference," he says.

Last year, the Government was finally able to muster enough political courage to allow universities to increase their annual tuition fee to up to £3,000 a year from 2006 provoking a rebellion from its own MPs. The fact that the Government, which has a steamroller majority in the Commons, managed to push through the legislation with a margin of just five votes despite a series of concessions, such as more generous terms for educational loans and special dispensation for poorer students, indicates how politically explosive the issue is.

Even those who dismiss the gloomy predictions about the future of British higher education admit that the crisis is deep, and the time is running out. Among the solutions being talked about is either a means-tested fee system, or an education cess. But both are likely to be unpopular — the former with middle-class families who will be suddenly required to pay more; and the latter with poorer families already struggling to cope with their current tax burden. In an election year, the Government is, understandably, averse to displeasing any section of the voters. But it can allow the current drift to continue only at the risk of losing what is still the best advertisement for Great Britain: its universities.

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