News

Drop in demand for maths

A national drop in demand to study maths in sixth forms and universities has prompted a recommendation to the University's Senate and Council to close the Department of Mathematics, and stop recruitment to most single honours maths degrees.

However most joint honours degrees, combining Maths with Statistics, Accounting, Economics, Computing and Finance will continue.

Maths and statistics courses tailored for students taking degrees in a range of laboratory and social sciences will also continue.

It is also being proposed to establish a Mathematics Institute, which will act as a focus for research and scholarly activity in mathematics and its applications.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ivor Crewe, said: 'This will emphatically not mean the end of mathematics at the University. The subject will continue to be taught and to be a field of research and scholarship.'

As the only Essex department not rated in the highest 4, 5 and 5-star categories following the recent Research Assessment Exercise, Maths will lose much of its research income from next year.

If the University's Senate and Council support the recommendation, the Department will close in 2004 when current single honours maths students complete their studies.

The proposals are in line with a strategic change in the University's science base. Subjects such as computer science, electronics, psychology, biological sciences and health and sports sciences are being expanded, to meet the demands of students and employers.

The University now has more students in science and technology subjects, both in absolute and proportional terms, than ever before.

In addition to recent major investments in new laboratories for Psychology and Sports Science, plans are well advanced to build a £2.5 million extension for Biological Sciences and a £6 million Networks Centre for research and teaching in Computer Science and Electronic Systems Engineering.

Review of student funding taxes the Government

This month Wyvern publishes the first in an occasional series of articles by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ivor Crewe, about the University and higher education.

'The prime minister has ordered a review of student funding. There are two dimensions to the issue: tuition fees and maintenance costs. In 1998 the Government introduced means-tested tuition fees for full-time undergraduates (currently £1075 a year) and replaced means-tested maintenance grants with subsidised loans.

The Government has also introduced a plethora of bursary schemes for students in special hardship categories. Although the headlines are about tuition fees, the ending of maintenance grants has caused more serious problems. Students from low-income families do not have to pay the tuition fee, but they do have to take out loans to cover their living costs.

Almost nobody considers the new system satisfactory. Ninety per cent of students are in debt to the tune of £6,000 on average, and most expect their debt to exceed £10,000 on graduation. Fewer and fewer can afford to proceed to postgraduate studies (and even more debt). Many dislike being so dependent on their parents.

Take up of the hardship schemes is low because few can master its "nightmare complexities" (the Minister's own phrase). Students increasingly rely on term-time jobs to get by, at the expense of academic studies.

The prospect of debt discourages significant numbers from lower-income families from applying to university, at a time when the Government is exhorting universities to admit larger numbers from wider social backgrounds. Even though A-level results are improving and more places are available, home demand for university places is static.

Moreover, contrary to common belief, tuition fees do not add a penny to university coffers. The amount paid to universities in fees is deducted by the Treasury from the central grant.

The Government review is therefore welcome. It has ruled out additional public expenditure as a source of more generous funding for students (or universities).

Any extra money must come from students themselves. If poorer students are to pay less then richer students must pay more.

One option is to increase the means-tested tuition fee to at least £2,000 a year and use the extra money to pay for maintenance grants for the poorest students.

I can see no objection to tuition fees in principle. Graduates' post-tax earnings are considerably higher than those of non-graduates and it is therefore reasonable to expect them to bear some of the cost of their higher education.

If high-income families can afford to pay much higher fees for their children's nursery education and private schools, then why not for university education?

However, it would be preferable to defer payment until after graduation, when graduates are enjoying the financial benefits of their higher education and are no longer dependent on their parents.

Deferred payment in the form of a 1p or 2p additional income tax for, say, 25 years for all graduates is the second option. It would raise substantial sums.

But a graduate tax has many snags. The tax paid by the graduate would not be related to the cost of their education. It would be difficult to collect from EU students. And there is no guarantee the Treasury would use the proceeds for higher education.

A better form of deferred payment is an income-contingent loan scheme, in which both maintenance costs and tuition fee contributions are paid after graduation, but only when the graduate's income reaches a certain level.

Such a scheme has many advantages. It avoids obligatory up-front payments and reduces the accumulation of debt while the student is at university. Students would be far less beholden to parents - and vice versa. Those who wanted to make an up-front payment could still do so. The financial deterrent to prospective students, while not disappearing, would be much weaker. The schedule of repayments after graduation would depend on ability to pay.

However, all reforms have their downside. In this case there would be a 'funding gap' between the abolition of tuition fees and the full flow-back of loan repayments to the university system. Universities could not afford to fill the gap from their own depleted reserves.

The Government could meet some of it by abolishing the current subsidy on loans and charging a commercial rate. That would increase the overall loan repayments of graduates, but the repayments would be spread out over a lifetime of earnings.

That seems a fair trade-off to me. But it might not to the headline writers to whom the Government appears so attentive. In a world of scarce resources and volatile voters, no reform of student funding can be free of risk for the Government.'

Also in the printed February edition of Wyvern:

• Access and excellence go together at Essex
• Around Essex
• Appeal to former students
• New Department boosts health care education