Broadcast: News items

Vice-Chancellor Sasha Roseneil

The Vice-Chancellor will be attending fringe events at this month’s Conservative and Labour party conferences to put forward a number of ideas about the future of higher education that she thinks should inform the next election’s party manifestos.   

The events will launch a new HEPI (Higher Education Policy Institute) report, Three Vice-Chancellors’ Manifestos. The report sees three Vice-Chancellors putting forward their suggestions on a range of pressing issues of concern to universities, with Sasha’s section focussing on higher education as a public good, and how we can better support students financially and with their mental health.  

Sasha said: "Over recent years, young people’s lives have been seriously impacted by the pandemic and the rising cost of living, and, those who are seeking to go to university are also facing the prospect of an increasingly underfunded higher education system."    

"There is political paralysis on university funding almost exclusively because of the uninspected belief that universities can only be funded through student fees. But a high-quality university sector is a public good that benefits young people and the country as a whole, and so it should command greater public investment. My manifesto makes the case for this greater public investment and explains some of things it should be spent on."  

Higher education as a public good

In her manifesto Sasha paints a picture of the current higher education landscape, where financial difficulties, due to the lack of government investment, have led to job losses and an inability to meet staff pay expectations. This has resulted in a series of strikes and a national marking and assessment boycott which have negatively impacted students already disrupted by the pandemic. Sasha argues that universities are engines of cultural creativity, economic change, societal development and technological innovation. To make the richly transformative experience offered by universities available fairly, Sasha puts forward seven proposals to increase university funding without increasing student fees. 

Underpinning these proposals is the belief that higher education is a public good that benefits the whole of society, and that investment in universities is one of the most important ways to shape our collective future for the better.  

The seven proposals are: 

• a COVID generation student premium for every UK undergraduate, with an enhanced level of support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. 
• a mental health and wellbeing support grant and ‘university clinics’. Sasha argues for dedicated mental health and wellbeing funding for universities, and for research-informed partnerships with the NHS to develop clinical excellence in young people’s mental health provision..  
• a ‘science superpower and crucible for creativity’ grant to directly support the renewal of university infrastructure and equipment, the appointment and employment of world-leading researchers and educators, and the training of the next generation of innovators and inventors. 
•  a new focus on student maintenance – treating student fee loans and maintenance loans separately in order to better balance lifetime repayments.  
• an independent, comprehensive review of university funding – including hearing citizens’ voices through a citizens’ assembly – to review the university funding and student support systems as a whole. 
• facilitating local public investment in student housing – with government incentives for local authorities and universities to work in partnership to develop public student accommodation. 
• making universities accountable to a single government department – reducing the regulatory burden on institutions and allowing government to take an integrated and holistic approach to universities.  

As well as Sasha’s manifesto, the HEPI report features a case for mobilising universities to drive a high-skill society by Professor Sir Chris Husbands and Natalie Day, from Sheffield Hallam University. Former Sussex, now University of Birmingham, Vice-Chancellor Professor Adam Tickell also sets out his manifesto for unleashing universities’ potential to solve to the nation’s challenges.  

Sasha will talk more about her manifesto at Thursday’s Open Forum (Thursday 5 October at 1.30pm).