Four universities will lose more than £1 million (Rs.7.3 crore) each in public funding this year and 15 others face smaller clawbacks after exceeding their limits on student intake. One of the institutions — London South Bank University — will be docked £2.2 million (Rs.16.06 crore) from its annual grant after taking on 600 more students than its cap allowed, figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) reveal.
Phil Cardew, pro vice chancellor (academic) at London South Bank, says the university experienced a “late surge” in accepted offers. “We monitor applications carefully, but in 2010 we were not able to react swiftly enough,” he says. “We have put in place new processes for 2011 that will ensure we are better able to meet these requirements in the future.”
In total, Hefce is clawing back £8.1 million (Rs.59.13 crore) from 19 higher education institutions that overshot their numbers cap, which is imposed to limit the cost of the system to the taxpayer. In addition, 33 further education colleges will be docked a total of £500,000 (Rs.3.65 crore).
Universities that take on too many new full-time undergraduates lose grant money at the rate of £3,750 (Rs.2.7 lakh) per “excess student” recruited. The money will be withheld from the affected universities’ grant payments in the last four months of the current academic year, which ends on July 31.
In addition to London South Bank, other institutions suffering substantial clawbacks for taking on too many students include Middlesex University (£1.4 million), the University of Greenwich (£1.2 million), Manchester Metropolitan University (£1.1 million) and Teesside University (£900,000).
The institution which was docked the most last year — De Montfort University, which was fined £3.4 million (Rs.24.82 crore) for over-recruiting 913 students in 2009-10 — has lost a further £1.1 million (Rs.8.03 crore) for failing to compensate adequately for the error in terms of this year’s recruitment.
Although the total amount of money cut — levied for a collective overshoot of more than 2,000 students — is about half last year’s figure of £15.7 million (Rs.114.6 crore), it starkly illustrates the inability of universities to boost their income through expansion. The case of Teesside shows that a university can be penalised for exceeding its full-time undergraduate cap while also losing money as a result of under-recruitment. It is already dealing with a £4.6 million (Rs.33.58 crore) loss of grant caused by its falling short of expectations in other areas of provision, including part-time teaching.
The rules on over-recruitment are set to be tightened even further when higher tuition fees are brought in from 2012, as the government strives to clamp down tightly on the cost to the treasury of the new system and cut overall numbers by 10,000. Minutes from a January meeting of Hefce’s board, recently published online, note that “in the future, student number controls will need to be different to the current system that claws back from institutions £3,750 for each student that they over-recruit — this is a lower figure than the possible income that institutions could gain from future fees”.
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)