Have a million for nothing much

Why should the old universities receive more funding for doing less? asks Paul Mackney

It is not often that you get rewarded for poor performance, but last Friday Tony Blair decided to make an exception. Using the "throw-money-at-those-that-already-have-most" branch of economics, he announced an extra £6 million a year in ring-fenced funding to improve access to universities that have the worst performances on social inclusion. This announcement has provoked an outcry in many new universities, only one of which is featured on the list.

No one is arguing that improving social access to those institutions is not important - they take fewer than 80 per cent of their students from state schools - but it has been given a disproportionate emphasis in the media. The key issue is one of encouraging students from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply for a wide range of universities and colleges, and to stay once they are there. It is not about reallocating students between institutions as in the Laura Spence case.

There is already a gross disparity between the funding higher education institutions get, with the ex-polytechnics receiving, on average, 50 per cent less, although most of their students are from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. While such inequality exists there will never be equality of opportunity or social inclusion.

Natfhe believes that access funding should go to institutions that have done and continue to do most to recruit and retain disadvantaged students. Using this rationale, many new universities would qualify for several times the figures announced last week.

It is no accident that expansion of higher education in the 1990s was greatest in new universities (student numbers up 153 per cent compared with the 1980s), nor that staff in these institutions have suffered the most from an inadequately funded expansion.

Today, the ex-polytechnics teach 60 per cent of all students, with half the teaching income of their old university colleagues. They also teach the vast majority of access students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Since many of the students that Mr Blair hopes to encourage require more, not less, learning support, a lack of resources in the new university sector is never going to be conducive to staff morale or a reduction in the dropout rate.

If the old universities are as committed as they claim to ensuring their student intake reflects our society, why do they not start using their own reserves to fund access schemes? They can certainly afford it. Some 75 per cent of all higher education reserves are held by just 15 old universities. How they can justify more government funding at the expense of others who need it more and are achieving more, is inexplicable.

The government should give some consideration to Natfhe's preferred funding option - which was endorsed by the select committee: increasing the 5 per cent premium for disadvantaged students to help all higher education institutions. An increase in the postcode premium, first to 20 per cent and later to 50 per cent, would go some way to redressing the balance between old and new universities' funding, as well as aiding student retention by reducing class size and enabling more student support.

So, Mr Blair, do not fritter away funds where there is little evidence they will be effective. It is no good ruling out top-up fees with one hand, but doing little to help fund disadvantaged students' main route into higher education with the other.

Paul Mackney is general secretary of lecturers' union Natfhe.