The increase to 9k fees did not actually provide more money to universities. It replaced a 70-80% cut in state funding which Osborne and Cameron no longer wanted to provide. Students as consumers would pay for the majority of university funding. And those fees would be something like 12k or so now just from inflation.
It is tricky to give a clear list that is applicable to all institutions. Oxford and Cambridge have billions in endowments. New universities may have as little as a million.
OUP and CUP as global publishers have never paid any tax here as Henry VIII made them that promise. So that's a massive income stream not available to the majority of institutions.
However, there are some big costs:
Staff:
- there is national pay bargaining, so a lecturers usually start on point 31 or 32 of this scale:
https://www.ucu.org.uk/he_singlepayspine
- it is a good wage, but considering a PhD is a prerequisite for the job, and a PhD requires a Masters degree, it is unusual now for people to start work in their 20s
- a university could have 1,000 academics or more
- every year a member of staff moves up the salary scale one point, as well as receiving an annual uplift
- university management salaries are large, but overall it may amount to £6-£10 million annually -- a lot, but not a large proportion
- usually over half of university employees are not academics but include cleaners, gardeners, IT, security, technicians, clerical staff, administrative support and so on, as well as recruitment staff whose sole role is to travel and market the institution around the world
- this can cost tens of millions alone
Buildings:
- many universities are postwar and have many buildings made from concrete (and many have RAAC)
- these buildings are often past their lifespan, are poorly insulated, are filled with asbestos, and cost millions just to heat and maintain
- many universities need new buildings because of the point above, and those can easily cost tens of millions, which are usually paid for by long-term loans with a 20-50 year span, again costing millions a year
- student accommodation usually has a 1-2% working surplus, meaning the fortune students are charged barely covers heating, food, staff, repairs, security (very important), and many more
Research and teaching costs:
- academics produce research as part of their job, which they are paid for
- academics publish that material and do not get paid extra for this
- those journals are owned by MNCs (Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer) who sell the publications back to the institutions that produce them, with licensing costs sometimes being tens of thousands of pounds per journal
- having up to date research and materials in a library can and does cost tens of millions annually (it is a racket which should be smashed)
- in the hard sciences equipment to produce research costs tens if not hundreds of thousands
- paying for lab equipment for teaching adds to that cost
- I haven't checked in the last couple of years but the last estimate I saw was that a science degree can cost 20-25k a year to teach a student, and more for medicine and dentistry
- even in the humanities and social sciences, if you want reasonable class sizes you may need 100 academic staff members to deliver all the modules and courses run in one subject
- an intake of 200 students per year, with class sizes in seminars of around 10, and full year lectures for the first year, can be reasonably delivered by 30-40 academics
- if you get academics to teach more, they cannot produce research, which is what is meant to underpin university teaching; if you do that, then I would say there is no point students going to that university
- a lot of important activities (open days, induction, clearing and admissions, day to day administration, exam boards) are done by academics and not support staff
- this 'saves' the institution employing more staff, and is in contrast to what happens in say the USA, where there is more money but also an expectation that academics will just do academics
Andrew McGettigan's work is excellent on all of this. He wrote about the 'Big University Gamble' in 2013 which basically predicted all this. Universities have been left to the whims of the market, which assumes only the best will survive. This is nonsensical (and contradictory) considering that universities are also seen by Government as a key regional employer and investment vehicle (which kind of assumes you want them to continue existing).
It also is problematic as universities are now allowed to take as many students as possible. This has led the richest to increase numbers in 'cheap' degrees to teach (humanities and social sciences), putting increased pressure on the poorer (and newer) universities. But again, this has no bearing on what skills the government needs universities to help students have to meet economic needs. Successive governments have set up a system where too many students get degrees which are seen as worthless (which the government criticises without mentioning their policies caused it), and where some universities and local economies will go to the wall, costing countless more jobs (but they don't want to change the underlying funding model to provide stability).
Further Reading
Andrew McGettigan:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/andrew-mcgettigan?filter=articles
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03079-w
https://taso.org.uk/news-item/why-t...isis-for-social-mobility-and-economic-growth/
