Three-quarters of the UK’s Universities are to face dramatic funding cuts next year. Yet York University is set to buck the trend as the University funding body ‘Hefce’ have revealed that York are to receive a 2.5% increase in funding.
The total investment, £7.3billion, amounts to a rise of 0.9%, but when inflation is taken into account this is actually a 1.1% decrease. But for York, funding will rise from £58,248,170 (adjusted in real terms) to £59,714,600, making York one of the biggest gainers in the UK.
This is in stark contrast to other UK institutions. LSE, for example, is set to lose 11.9% of its funding. These cuts, combined with a 23% increase in student applications this year have caused serious concern, with some studies suggesting that there will be 6,000 less places in UK Universities this year. In fact, Aaron Porter NUS vice-president has warned of a “summer of chaos” this year.
These findings would seem to confirm suggestions that York’s Heslington East expansion was to provide a valuable source of income for the University in these dark times. It was additionally hinted by the Hefce that Universities that are to receive increases in funding are those that have high quality research.
The University has reacted with reserved enthusiasm commenting that they were “content” with York’s funding levels, adding that “It is a positive outcome that reflects our position as a leading high quality research institution, and the success of our strategy for growth and development”.
Additionally, The increases have provided relief for some students who were worried about the Vice-Chancellor Brian Cantor’s remarks in a recent Vision interview, where he stated that political lobbying was a “waste of time”. Second Year PPE student, Thomas Ibbetson commented, “This is really good news for York, I was expecting funding cuts and all the negative consequences that would come with them, so this comes as a huge relief.”
inb4payforporters
No excuses now for not paying for porters, especially when managers
have been awarding themselves above-inflation salary increases for
years, leaving a dozen of them on over £120,000. Since portering
was slashed there has been (despite YUSU lies to the contrary) a
78% increase in crime on campus. There has also been a significant
impact on societies and on disability welfare which even YUSU has
been forced to acknowledge. Yet Hes Hall is still refusing to
put ANY MONEY AT ALL into the restoration of portering hours….
*Unis
I thought we all decided that the reason the university isn’t paying other porters is because they are not needed and the outside security services are doing fine. No other university I know of has night porters and students there seem to cope just fine; it seems that York students just can’t cope with the responsibilities that come with moving away from mummy and daddy’s house. Anyway, I’m going to bait you like this and then leave because I have essays to write, so there’s no point in anyone spending hours formulating an angry response. Just so you know.
Back to the point of the article, which the other commenters seem to have missed – this is good news. Still, I hope it doesn’t mean that York students will become complacent and not bother to help other universities that haven’t been so lucky in the funding allocations for next year. There are lots of departments that are having to make big cuts, like the Leeds English department just down the road for instance. If we can help out by campaigning against these (and, dare I say it, not voting conservative?) then we are more likely to be able to preserve York’s funding for the future.
First off, a 2.5% increase is, in real-terms, little more than standstill, which is of course better than a cut. Second, HEFCE money cannot be used to fund porters, nor does an increase in HEFCE money really ‘free up’ other monies to fund porters. Third, while the HEFCE ‘increase’ is I am sure welcome, it is only one funding strand.
Why doesn’t it free up other money? Also, the university is about
to put hundreds of overseas students on Hes East, which will bring
in profits far bigger than £1.5 million per year, and can be spent
any way Hes Hall likes. And security services aren’t doing fine.
Crime has risen 78% on campus, against a backdrop of falling crime
in York as a whole. Also, there are various effects on things like
societies and disability welfare. A partial (or preferably a full)
restoration of portering hours would be money well spent. Does
anyone know what the projections are for the non-HEFCE sources of
funding for the next couple of years?
The HEFCE money will not free up any other money because a, it hardly represents any additional money this year and b, the uni will have budgeted to spend roughly what has been recieved, on teaching and learning. All streams of revenue are squeezed, though York did relatively well in the RAE.
I didn’t contradict Anon because I do not think that porters are a worthy expenditure, it’s just that the HEFCE allocation should and will have no bearing on this issue.In terms of raising revenue, unfortunately the university has to turn to the faithful sources, rent, services, conferences, and tuition fees.
I would hate to see my SU campaigning for an increase in the cost of any of these, or in the case of conferences, the frequency. Without such increases though, the portering issue will not be turned around
The money IS there!
The main anti-portering argument since last summer, as used by Hes
Hall and YUSU, has been that a reduction of HEFCE revenue was forcing
a choice between academic budgets and portering money. Month after
month, and UGM after UGM, the big trump card has been the threat that
money into portering equals money out of academic departments. Then,
at the very moment that that primary excuse for cutting portering no
longer applies, and it looks like some money could be freed off for
a partial reinstatement of portering hours, people start claiming that
the link between the two budgets doesn’t exist! Of course it exists!
A partial reinstatement of porters would need very little money (the
latest UGM figures are about £15,000 to £25,000 for a fairly decent
improvement in portering), and on that scale £1.5m is a lot. And
the fact that £1.5m is a small amount in terms of the total budget
for the university simply underscores the fact that the portering
money is even more minuscule in the broader scheme of things.
I don’t see how the university could have allocated the extra £1.5m
already, when they didn’t know about that figure until recently. And
if they HAVE earmarked 100% (instead of 98%) of that amount for non-
portering stuff, then that’s a mistake, and needs to rectified. It’s
easy to put right when you consider we have millions in the annual
budget surplus. Twenty or thirty thousand isn’t hard to find, and
we don’t have to wait. Put it this way: if the V-C’s house suddenly
subsided and had to be rebuilt (and wasn’t covered by insurance!)
does anyone really think that he’d have to wait for two years for
it to be done because all the existing money had been budgeted for
the next two years? There’s plenty of flexibility in the system
for affordable and necessary projects.
A 10p a week increase in rents would be (especially compared with the
yearly £5 a week increase) worth it for a proper improvement, but I
don’t see why one or two percent of the £1.5m figure, obtained
directly or from the surplus, can’t be fed into the DFM for porters
– and you haven’t really said why it can’t be.
So long as we have enough money to pay all the top management six-
figure salaries, then issues like disability welfare, societies, a
78% increase in campus crime levels, and the increased possibility
of serious incidents in the future are all worth a small fraction
of the £1.5m figure.
Jools – you quote a 78% increase in crime on campus, has this figure been broken down anywhere? and who has compiled this data, University? CYC? (sorry if i have missed this)
Is it an increase in muggings, physical assualts, breaking and entering or simply bike thefts? If it is simply bike thefts than can you clarify what you would expect porters to do about this?
Porters provide deterrence, and I’ve even seen one coming out of the
Vanbrugh lodge and running after bike thieves! I also know of one
who chased a letter thief from the Vanbrugh postroom across campus,
and got injured in the process. Porters do an amazing job across SO
many different areas, bike-theft-related and non-bike-theft related.
Why does it get acknowledged that porters prevent other crime, but
when anyone mentions bike thefts people suddenly decide that porters
can’t possibly have any connection with preventing that specific crime
area? It couldn’t possibly be that arbitrarily removing bike thefts
from the equation helps to reduce the 78% increase, could it? It’s like
a security guard who has just let someone walk out with ten CDs saying,
“Well, if you don’t count CD thefts, I’ve been really successful”.
It’s totally, TOTALLY pathetic and transparent.
Bike thefts matter, especially if you’re the one whose bike got stolen,
and you don’t get to pick and choose which crimes count just to bend
things to fit an anti-portering agenda. It’s like those invalid data
comparisons with non-collegiate and non-campus universities, or when
they said that violent crime is incredibly rare or has reduced, and then
it turned out that they were conveniently excluding student-on-student
attacks. I don’t know whether that vicious student-on-student beating
last October fell before or after the cuts, but either way it apparently
isn’t even worth noting. Despite the fact that that guy could have died.
The case against portering is all about selective data. If it were not potentially so dangerous – helping to remove such an important service –
then the whole thing would be a joke. There is NO proper case against
portering. If there were, porters would have been axed 30 years ago.
Hes Hall say that bike thefts “almost entirely” account for the rise,
which is a slippery way of admitting that other crime areas have gone
up too, but marginally. Total campus crime would presumably have been
close to doubling (100% instead of 78%) if Hes Hall hadn’t lucked out
with the general drop in crime across York as a whole, which coincided
with the cutbacks.
The figure of a 78% rise in crime since portering was cut is from North
Yorkshire Police. They seem to know more about what is going on than
the Union, who for some reason (well, to undermine portering, I guess)
are making stuff up about total campus crime “reducing” since the cuts.
The fact that we continue to have a low rate of heavier-end crime when
compared with Leeds and wherever is a totally false train of thought,
as in practical terms what it is in fact saying is “Let’s keep on with
the cuts until we get closer to the average. Then we’ll stop cutting”.
Higher crime rates are something to avoid, not aim for.
Returning to the article, we’ve got £1.5m million more than we thought.
In fact, when you consider that we thought the money was going to go
down by several million, then we’ve got that-amount-PLUS-£1.5m more
than we thought we’d have. And the overseas students on Hes East are
going to start bringing in eight-figures extra in profit each year.
The money IS THERE, and the restoration of portering hours to midnight
or beyond needs to start happening soon.
The idea that we have £1.5 million more because of the HEFCE announcement is silly. We may, in 2009/2010 have come to realise that there was a possibility that the HEFCE budget could see our share reduce and it is of course good news that it didn’t. However, what makes you think that the uni had not, in its medium term planning, which was undertaken before the recesion, planned for a steady increase in HEFCE funds?
The uni’s priority is remaining financially viable, followed by supporting departments and students. I do not debate that 24-hour portering is better than anything less, just that a tiny increase in HEFCE funding should not impact on the discussion.
The money for portering may very well be there, I just do not think that HEFCE money, aimed at learning and teaching, should ever be mentioned in the same sentence as portering
The medium-term spending projections for departments were revised
this term in the light of expected HEFCE cuts which didn’t happen.
Amazing how budgets are deemed to be flexible when it comes to
cutbacks, but mention money for portering and people start to
claim that everything is completely set in stone years in advance.
The portering cutbacks have meant £200,000 saved this year by moving
staff to the new campus – even though the new campus will generate
tens of millions of extra money each year, and could easily have self-
funded its own portering costs instead of nicking staff from Hes West.
That £200,000 de facto cut was in anticipation of a massive HEFCE cut
this year. That £200,000 alone could put £40,000 back into portering
over the next three years – more than the UGM motions asked for – with
£80,000 left over. And there should now be a chance of something like
that happening because the HEFCE money went up not down.
The HEFCE money is a lot compared with the portering budget, and will
free off some money. It is therefore extremely relevant to a portering
debate which has centred around HEFCE funding from day one. People never
told Hes Hall, when they were linking the two, that they shouldn’t mention
HEFCE and portering in the same sentence!
I think we have been given more money for a reason. How much has York St John increased by/ been slashed by. Generally funding hikes to certain institutions come with takeover orders from Hefcee soon after. York could be being poised to take over and asset strip York St John…. college no 10, St John’s, University of York!!!???
Regarding the issue of whether we conceptualise money as coming “from”
the extra HEFCE funding or “from” Hes East or “from” the surplus or “from”
the £200,000 which we’ve already saved by reducing porters – none of that
ultimately matters. The important thing is that the “gigantic HEFCE cuts
about to hit” argument no longer applies, and that the TOTAL budget –
helped by, but of course not consisting exclusively of, the HEFCE increase
– is very easily big enough to cover the cost of hiring a couple of
replacement porters. J and C above both seem to agree on this, and
hopefully everyone else agrees about this, too. Putting £30,000 or
£40,000 back into portering is a no-brainer.
The porter reduction should never have happened in the first place, and
especially not on that kind of a scale. It’s shameful. I know people
who are affected by the cuts in ways which affect their disabilities, and
for that reason in particular we need to get some portering back ASAP.
HE – your thing about taking over St. John is interesting! The idea
of asset stripping a poor little second-rate uni is kind of ruthless
and nasty, but the idea of us getting hold of their campus is pretty
appealing! St. John’s is gorgeous! Like an Oxford college. A lot
nicer than the low-grade sixties brutalist rubbish we’ve got over here.
And parts of St.J are quite modern, too, so it seems to have the best
of both worlds. Great access to town, too. It’s a great little campus.
A bit like the King’s Manor, but friendlier. There are more of us than
there are of them, so I reckon we could go and take it over whether the
HEFCE orders the takeover or not. We should wait until they all go round
the corner to the Minster to get their degrees, and then move in and
change the locks while they’re out.
Yep, agreed! – the total amount (however achieved) is the main thing, and
portering is definitely worth the money.
Also agreed about the St. John campus being great, and worth stealing!
Someone told me that they’re affiliated with Leeds Uni…? If so, then
maybe that’s not the best affiliation to have at this precise moment.
I didn’t mean steal in a bad way, though. Shame for them if their
money does reduce….
We’d have to boot all the St Johns students out though if we did take it over….
I mean, their welcome to re-apply, but.. y’know…
gwah – that’s the funniest messageboard comment I’ve ever read!