Universitys future in doubt
MPs have warned that the future of a university is in doubt as it faces the repayment of over £50m, after an audit found "incorrect data" on students.
London Metropolitan University has admitted that this puts more than 300 jobs at risk - and unions are planning a campus protest on Wednesday.
The funding council says the deduction of income follows an audit showing inaccurate reporting of drop-out rates.
A university leader says there could be further cases of such "gotcha audits".
The audits have been carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) - which found discrepancies in the figures showing the number of students who had not completed courses.
'Substantial overfunding'
The "incorrect data" meant that there had been "substantial overfunding" of London Metropolitan since 2005.
The University and College Union says that for London Metropolitan University, attended by 34,000 students, this will mean "unprecedented cuts" which would threaten course closures.
In an early day motion, MPs say that the university faces the loss of £56m - an £18m reduction in teaching budgets and £38m in claw-backs for previous years.
"This scale of cuts throws the future viability of the university into doubt at a time when education and training are vital to the capital's economic health," says the motion before the House of Commons.
The university says that the teaching budget loss will be £15m - and that the retrospective reductions will be "substantial".
Hefce says that there are negotiations over a repayment schedule, with a meeting set for next month.
'Perverse'
The University and College Union and the National Union of Students are to stage a protest outside a meeting of the university's governors on Wednesday.
It is believed that there are other institutions which will face a loss of income or repayments from previous years following audit checks by Hefce.
Kingston University is among other institutions facing repayments. It says that after an audit the figure for students not completing courses was adjusted from 6.4% to 8.6%, which will mean losing £500,000.
Les Ebdon, head of the Million+ group of universities, has attacked a "perverse" form of counting non-completion rates - which, he says, will undermine efforts to widen access to higher education.
Under the counting system, he says that students who re-sit and pass course modules in the following year are counted as having dropped out - with the loss of funding for those students.
Mr Ebdon warns that this will hurt the universities making the greatest efforts to recruit poorer students, who are mostly likely to drop-out.
"We are taking a risk to implement government policy - but we're not getting support for it."
He described the funding council's tactics as "gotcha audits".
Job fears
Barry Jones, the London regional official for the University and College Union, says that the union is seeking an explanation from the university authorities into what has caused this funding problem, which he says could threaten one in five staff.
The loss of more than 300 posts could affect the jobs of up to 500 staff, he says.
He says that the MPs' warning about this being a threat to the viability of the university was not an exaggeration of the seriousness of the problem.
The union's general secretary described the situation as "critical".
A statement from the university says that job losses "appear to be inevitable" and that the impact of the funding cut would be "significant".
A Hefce spokesman says that the details of any other universities which will have to make repayments will not be known until March.
He also rejected suggestions of unfairness, saying that the rules on completing courses had not been changed and that they had to be applied consistently.
Hefce also says that there is additional funding available to support the widening of participation in higher education - and that this is a separate funding issue from inaccuracies in student data.
However there will be changes in future to the funding rules for partially-completed courses which might address the concerns about modules being re-taken by students in the following year.
Source: BBC News 28th January 2009.
28th Jan 2009
