10 December 2014 
Jen Summerton, Executive Director
Whilst other commentators were discussing the postgraduate loan system, Julian Gravatt, Assistant Chief Executive at the Association of Colleges, has focused on government plans for further cuts that will likely require a minimum 30% reduction in the BIS budget. Working through each aspect of the budget in turn – including HEFCE, Science and Research, Maintenance grants, and FE – he attempts to show how 30% cuts might be achieved, and the impact this would have on the Higher Education system.
In order to meet the targets, cuts would have to be made in each area, and this would mean the end of ring-fenced funding for science. Among the options available are the end of the ‘dual support’ system of funding via both HEFCE and Research Councils in order to eliminate duplication, the end of humanities and social science funding via the AHRC and ESRC, or the ending of international subscriptions and space research. There’s also the possibility of a blanket reduction in the QR budget, perhaps tied with an increase in concentration towards research-intensive institutions.
Among other likely cuts are a re-imposition of a student numbers cap, a complete removal of maintenance grants, or even the abolition of BIS itself, and moving its various areas of responsibility into other (potentially devolved) departments.
However, Gravatt warns that the ‘efficiency squeeze’ required to meet the 30% cuts targets would have ‘savage consequences’. He believes they could “wreck efforts to widen participation and improve access”, and that academically-selective universities could end up becoming more socially selective. In addition, he worries that “there would be damage to supply of highly educated and skilled people into the economy, not to mention the pipeline of new ideas”. In conclusion he writes:
“Just because the spending cuts are possible and just because a 30% RDEL cut was made by BIS between 2010 and 2015 is no reason to think that it is possible to be done again. The argument against the spending plans set out in the latest Autumn Statement is not that the cuts can’t be made, but that they shouldn’t be made at all”.
The article is worth reading in full.
