Department for Education The latest figures show over two million university students, with a further 198,000 studying for higher education courses in further education colleges. The increase in numbers of students has continued every year since 1987, when there were just over 800,000 HE students.
But the increase in student numbers has outstripped the expansion of academic staff, and funding per head of students has served to question the viability of courses covering some more "theoretical" and overtly "academic" subjects.
In preparation for the introduction of top-up fees next year, Anglia Polytechnic University announced plans to close three quarters of its courses (1,500) including chemistry and geography.
In several universities Italian and German language degrees are being dropped, while media student "consumer" buys the educational package that will guarantee a degree, which in turn will deliver enhanced earning power through which the loans and debts run up can be repaid - offers a potentially deceptive scenario to students. ¿A University should not actually "sell" a degree: instead it offers a course of education which enables students to study, and if they reach a sufficiently high standard they will get a degree.
Unlike transactions in which goods and services are purchased, and a failure to deliver the goods or services specified in the contract is in breach of the law, signing on for a degree and paying the fees cannot and must not be seen as an automatic entitlement to a qualification.
If this were to happen, the value of the end product would be drastically curtailed - and all students and graduates would lose out.
Nevertheless many new universities insist that the norm should be a 90% pass rate -irrespective of the abilities, skills and level of commitment of a given student cohort.
To make matters worse, larger classes offer less opportunity to address the needs of those students with greatest needs.
In Media courses the maximum teacher:student ratio has
been set at 1:25, with the obvious implication that while much
larger classes may be required
to run (there is no defined figure
above which a class of more
than 25 would have to split into
two, any undergraduate course
which does not recruit 25 students will not run.
However these numbers take
no account of the availability of
suitable equipment, technical
provision and support.
If for example 25 students are
successfully recruited to a journalism course, a teaching area
equipped with 25 computer terminals is needed.
Whatever government rhetoric
may claim, for HE students the
marketisation of education
means a dumbing down of standards, in which all students
stand to lose out.