EPC petitions Government to make up an annual shortfall of £897.5m for Engineering HE ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review
Ahead of the Spending Review this summer, the EPC has campaigned to the HM treasury urging that financial pressures on the sector must be addressed and Government must ensure that the sector is sustainable. Ensuring a steady flow of new engineering talent must be a priority for this Government and Engineering higher education will play a vital role in this.
The cost of higher education Engineering provision significantly outweighs the domestic fee income. The Department for Education’s own figures measure Engineering at double the cost to run of many classroom-based courses, and the EPC estimate a tuition fee shortfall of £7,591 per year per domestic Engineering student in the 2025/26 academic year.
Typical estimates of a £1.4 billion loss to the HE sector on teaching domestic students are benchmarked against a static tuition fee, but this loss does not properly reflect the financial pressures on Engineering to make up over 40% of Engineering course running costs for domestic students. Domestic Engineering higher education in England is systematically sustained from provider resource, such as cross-subsidy from other subjects and, particularly, international students with consequences for immigration policies. To grow the UK engineering talent pipeline of graduate engineers needed to meet the industry demand, additional funding is needed into Engineering higher education. Linking fees to inflation will create a greater sustainability as will an uplift in subject-specific funding.
In particular, we have highlighted the need for additional funding to for strategically important, high delivery-cost and very high-cost and at-risk Engineering provision to address an annual shortfall of £897.5m and removal of the barrier to student immigration such as the ban on dependents at undergraduate and postgraduate study levels.
In the long-term, we encourage the Government to evaluate how universities can be put on a sustainable financial footing, whilst incentivising the provision of high-cost STEM courses, without excessively penalising graduates or deterring prospective domestic students. We propose a review of HE funding models and a shift towards full-cost funding or targeted strategic investment for research funding.
You can read the full submission here.
