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There's a bit more to the story than that. British universities were pushing hard for the raised tuition fees at the time, a legacy of Labour's drive to drasti

There's a bit more to the story than that. British universities were pushing hard for the raised tuition fees at the time, a legacy of Labour's drive to drastically increase the numbers of people going. They claimed that they were going broke and needed the possibility of charging more to decrease class sizes and scale up their operations. They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap, that in most cases the new prices would be hardly different. The coalition, both Tories and Lib Dems, were completely suckered by this claim. They came to see raising the price cap as an unpleasant compromise, needed in order to ensure education remained high quality at the very highest end (russell group etc). What actually happened next showed that the claims of universities were a lie: every university immediately raised their prices to the max and faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming they needed it to benefit students immediately went on "strike", except it was the sort of strike where they continued to turn up and do research (the fun bits), but refused to mark students exams. In other words they held students hostage at the start of their careers. I remember because I was there at the time. Because the university sector has pathetically weak management this tactic worked very well, and within months the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for lecturers and other academic staff. The new money was swallowed whole by the existing system, the big promised expansion never happened. The ironic thing is that universities are heavily biased towards Labour/Lib Dem voting, with university towns being much more orange than typical, even though it was the Tories who gave them all massive pay rises and Clegg who notionally opposed it.

smcl 4y ago
> They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap Yeah I remember this too - the commonly-held belief was that only the top Universities (Oxbridge, Durham, LSE and UCL, plus Edinburgh/St Andrews for English students) who would max it out, and that the rest might just allow themselves a little bit more to balance the books. Looking back it seems pretty obvious that it wouldn't go down like this - who wouldn't want to give themselves more money? I didn't recall all the details of the aftermath though (the strike + the capitulation) though, that was a pretty interesting turn. I guess it was after 2011 when I moved abroad.
jamessb 4y ago
> faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming they needed it to benefit students immediately went on "strike" > the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for lecturers This makes it sound like the money from tuition fee rises went to the academics as pay. It didn't: they've now had real terms pay cuts for over a decade (here's one estimate [1]), as well as their pensions becoming worse. The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there was a strike in 2013 because university staff had had a real-terms pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013 [2]. It would also be more accurate to say that universities and vice-chancellors (rather than "academics") pushed for a raise in fees. [1]: https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1579061761013329921 https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1579061761013329921 [2]: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/6846/Strikes-remain-on-at-universities-and-colleges-next-week https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/6846/Strikes-remain-on-at-uni...
- origin_path 4y ago
  "The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there was a strike in 2013 because university staff had had a real-terms pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013 [2]." You're right, I'm mis-remembering the ordering of events. The strike I'm talking about was in 2006 and pre-dated the tripling of the fee cap. They got a ~15% increase for everyone in the entire sector, including non-academic staff. Then they started to plead poverty and demanding a rise in the price cap, even as the great recession was ravaging the economy. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/06/lecturerspay.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/06/lecturerspay.high... I do seem to have recalled correctly that they claimed at the time very few universities would actually raise prices. Your university source picks the time period for their "pay cut in real terms" starting immediately after they got a big pay rise phased in over two years. I learned at the time that the way unions calculate things like cost of living and "real terms" isn't always what you'd expect, though this was coming up on 20 years ago so I forgot the exact details of what they were doing. At least back then it wasn't just inflation. I do remember being pretty disgusted at their strike tactics and especially at the fact that universities continued to pay them, even as they refused to do their jobs.
  - 4y ago
pjc50 4y ago
Student numbers definitely have expanded over time: https://www.ft.com/content/8f3ab80a-ec2b-427d-80ae-38ad27ad423d https://www.ft.com/content/8f3ab80a-ec2b-427d-80ae-38ad27ad4... .. although that's to a great extent international students, because their fees aren't capped at all. Higher education is one of the UK's successful export industries. The strike seems to have been, as always, changes to pensions and preventing pay cuts: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/07/university-lecturers-pension-strike https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/07/university...

smcl 4y ago

> They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap Yeah I remember this too - the commonly-held belief was that only the top Universities (Oxbridge, Durham, LSE and UCL, plus Edinburgh/St Andrews for English students) who would max it out, and that the rest might just allow themselves a little bit more to balance the books. Looking back it seems pretty obvious that it wouldn't go down like this - who wouldn't want to give themselves more money? I didn't recall all the details of the aftermath though (the strike + the capitulation) though, that was a pretty interesting turn. I guess it was after 2011 when I moved abroad.

jamessb 4y ago

> faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming they needed it to benefit students immediately went on "strike" > the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for lecturers This makes it sound like the money from tuition fee rises went to the academics as pay. It didn't: they've now had real terms pay cuts for over a decade (here's one estimate [1]), as well as their pensions becoming worse. The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there was a strike in 2013 because university staff had had a real-terms pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013 [2]. It would also be more accurate to say that universities and vice-chancellors (rather than "academics") pushed for a raise in fees. [1]: https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1579061761013329921 https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1579061761013329921 [2]: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/6846/Strikes-remain-on-at-universities-and-colleges-next-week https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/6846/Strikes-remain-on-at-uni...

origin_path 4y ago
"The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there was a strike in 2013 because university staff had had a real-terms pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013 [2]." You're right, I'm mis-remembering the ordering of events. The strike I'm talking about was in 2006 and pre-dated the tripling of the fee cap. They got a ~15% increase for everyone in the entire sector, including non-academic staff. Then they started to plead poverty and demanding a rise in the price cap, even as the great recession was ravaging the economy. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/06/lecturerspay.highereducation https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/06/lecturerspay.high... I do seem to have recalled correctly that they claimed at the time very few universities would actually raise prices. Your university source picks the time period for their "pay cut in real terms" starting immediately after they got a big pay rise phased in over two years. I learned at the time that the way unions calculate things like cost of living and "real terms" isn't always what you'd expect, though this was coming up on 20 years ago so I forgot the exact details of what they were doing. At least back then it wasn't just inflation. I do remember being pretty disgusted at their strike tactics and especially at the fact that universities continued to pay them, even as they refused to do their jobs.
- 4y ago

pjc50 4y ago

Student numbers definitely have expanded over time: https://www.ft.com/content/8f3ab80a-ec2b-427d-80ae-38ad27ad423d https://www.ft.com/content/8f3ab80a-ec2b-427d-80ae-38ad27ad4... .. although that's to a great extent international students, because their fees aren't capped at all. Higher education is one of the UK's successful export industries. The strike seems to have been, as always, changes to pensions and preventing pay cuts: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/07/university-lecturers-pension-strike https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/07/university...