Sausages, and ‘unprofitable activities’ (aka students).

by reestheskin on 08/06/2018

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Besides, “university league tables are like sausages: the more you know about how they are made, the less you want to [do with] them”.

“Research was structurally unprofitable even if you scored really well in the research excellence framework,” he claims. “It’s being financed by surpluses on taught master’s. I think that’s fine because part of the reason people came on the taught programmes was because the place was very highly ranked in research, and they thought they were going to be sitting at the feet of the best economists around. Academics had to understand the dynamic and deliver the teaching because that was what was paying for the research. Yet because of the history of underfunding [undergraduate] students [before the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees in 2012], a kind of mood gained ground in British universities that [all] students were an unprofitable activity.

Paris to London: Howard Davies on the finance sector and universities’ common interests | Times Higher Education (THE)