'One-dimensional' policy damaging the arts

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The allocation of higher education funding announced last week will "seriously disadvantage" arts and humanities teaching, says Professor Stuart Bartholomew of GuildHE.

In any academic discipline and especially in the arts, perspective is a crucial element.

The same ought to apply in the world of public policy, but sadly – as signalled by the higher education funding allocations for England last week – policies affecting universities and other HE institutions seem to have been designed from a one-dimensional point of view.

In the allocations we see the beginnings of what will be a revolution in higher education funding that, if it goes ahead as planned, will seriously disadvantage institutions whose main business is providing high-quality teaching in the arts and humanities.

Research-led universities will be least affected by this year's round of cuts, and in the next two years a disproportionate squeeze will be further applied on resources available for smaller, teaching-led arts institutions.

This fact seems to have been conveniently overlooked by the higher education minister David Willetts, who at the recent annual conference of the UK Arts and Design Institutions Association (UKADIA) challenged institutions to find a government policy that intentionally disadvantaged arts higher education.

The minister's argument was that the government's policies are "subject-neutral", since it is purely the cost of teaching different subjects that determines their level of state funding.

Looked at from a less narrow perspective, however, while there may not be intentional discrimination against the arts, coalition policies bring unintended but damaging consequences that amount to the same thing.

Members of UKADIA have no doubts that the cost of delivering some art and design courses is well above the £6,000 assumed to be the break-even point by the government in its proposals on tuition fees. In fact the true cost is closer to the maximum possible £9,000.

As a result, institutions whose courses fall mainly into the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE's) Band C for teaching funding (a mixture of classroom-based and lab- or workshop-based work) will find themselves squeezed as the new fees and funding regime kicks in.

Universities with a large number of Band D, non-lab courses, in theory can charge undergraduates £7,000 or £8,000 a year, making a surplus from which they can cross-subsidise other activities.

Those in Band C already have the higher costs to compensate for, and thus have little opportunity to generate surplus fee income. This would damage not only their core activities but also the widening participation for which UKADIA's National Arts Learning Network has received recognition.

The result will be a vicious circle of reduced institutional capacity, income, flexibility and attractiveness to prospective students.

There is another problem with a funding model that sees government money for higher education going via students in the form of loans to be repaid over the years from graduate contributions. The typical career in the arts does not entail the sort of stable or predictable employment that will produce the steady, long-term returns this model presumes.

Apparently riding to the rescue, in their annual grant letter on higher education funding, ministers made a point of saying that small and specialist institutions should continue to be recognised and supported.

But it is not clear whether Mr Willetts believes that all specialist and small institutions receive such funding. In fact, most do not. Funding is limited to one-to-one tuition in institutions such as the conservatoires and Oxbridge colleges.

Moreover even where it exists, this small rug of apparent support is whipped out from beneath many small specialist institutions by another policy change relating to the next round of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF).

HEIF exists to promote knowledge transfer or exchange, giving practical effect to the view that higher education should bring wider economic and social benefits. Unfortunately, the HEIF 5 proposals outlined by the government are inherently contradictory.

To ensure that only "the most effective performers" are supported, it advocates a minimum qualifying level of external income – set at £250,000. This is supposed to increase universities' interaction with business and other users by focussing more on performance than capacity. But the rule seems to confuse size and effectiveness.

The change would undermine the whole principle of knowledge exchange because smaller institutions outperform the sector as a whole. An evaluation of such ‘third stream' funding from 2001-07 found that the compound average growth rate of knowledge exchange income for the arts cluster was 35 per cent – significantly ahead of all HEIs at 12 per cent. Growth was strongest amongst the specialist arts institutions that are most likely to lose funding under the HEIF 2011-15 formula.

There is one beacon of hope. Ministers want the top policy priorities for targeted funding in 2011-12 to be supporting widening participation and fair access, and ensuring adequate provision of what are known as Strategically Important and Vulnerable subjects. They have asked HEFCE to consider what subjects – including arts, humanities and social sciences – should in future be covered by this.

But as things stand, the other proposed changes almost guarantee reduced participation, weakened knowledge transfer, and greater risks for an important part of the sector.

Whether by accident or design, failure by ministers to take a more realistic perspective could see many venerable, valuable institutions placed in a vulnerable position.

Professor Stuart Bartholomew is chair of UKADIA, principal and chief executive of the Arts University College at Bournemouth, and an executive board member of GuildHE.