After the A-level fiasco, students will now be let down by the government's scorn for universities

As summer draws to a close and the dust settles on the A-level results fiasco, young people’s thoughts are turning to the start of a new academic year. In the states, it’s already off to a rocky start with the University of Notre Dame becoming the latest institution to suspend in-person teaching just eight days into term due to a spike in coronavirus cases. But what awaits UK universities in four weeks time?

From significantly reduced accommodation and hospitality income, to the loss of summer conference business, the virus has exacerbated the financial instability of universities in an already volatile market. Because institutions are so reliant on student fees to stay afloat, there couldn’t be a more significant threat to the UK’s higher education sector than a pandemic that deters international student study, forces activity away from physical campuses and has students questioning their degree’s value for money.

To date, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has been less than sympathetic, despite IFS analysis indicating at least 13 universities are at risk of bankruptcy. Their only offer of support comes in the form of repayable loans with significant and stringent strings attached, asking universities to combat a number of Conservative ideological bugbears in exchange for loans.

The “higher education restructuring regime” document would suggest this government’s concerns about HE aren’t student mental health, sexual assault and affordability, but freedom of speech, administration costs and Students’ Unions’ “niche activism and campaigns”.

As a result, institutions are being forced to make plans for September based on their balance sheets rather than the safety and wellbeing of students and staff. The ever present financial threat of mass deferrals has seen university marketing practices fall into misselling; students are paid by comms teams to talk about how brilliant online learning is and student influencers are used covertly to portray the university in a good light, unfairly and untenably raising students’ expectations of their experience.

Then, as if planning socially distanced provision within limited space wasn’t difficult enough, the financial uncertainty – including the huge amount of lost income from the projected drop in international students’ – risks the over-recruitment of home students to make up for it. The government’s latest gaffe over A-levels also pressured institutions to accept higher numbers of students as a result of thousands more students meeting their offer grades just days after the first tranche of students had already been accepted. Add the last-minute removal of the number cap for good measure, and institutions are able to recruit to their bank accounts’ content.

In four weeks time, students will traverse the country in their thousands to their university cities. Still paying at least £9,250 in tuition fees and locked into 12-month housing contracts they signed back in January, it makes more sense currently to return to their university city to get their money’s worth than sit in their family home on Zoom for a year.

When they arrive, students might get online lectures substituted by socially distanced face-to-face seminars, but how are they expected to spend the rest of the hours in their weeks? It won’t be as easy to access the university experience that marketing teams advertised to them. Their expectations won’t be met.

Despite the headlines, it’s not just “extremes” of behaviour like wild parties that pose an enormous Covid-19 risk. Basic joys of the student experience such as sitting in pubs with friends, taking part in sports and societies, visiting each other’s student houses and exploring relationships risk spreading the virus. The sheer interconnectedness, the very thing that makes higher education so impactful, is what makes this so complicated.

Rightly or wrongly, students will receive the blame when transmission rates increase and though the virus might not pose a significant risk to many students themselves, the same can’t be said for others living in the communities that students live and socialise in. Already tense relationships between students and residents could break down completely.

Government financial support could mitigate these risks. Sufficient financial assurances to the sector would allow universities to prioritise safety over money, allowing institutions to explore staggered starts to term, managing the flow of students into university cities and centre student and staff safety in decision-making. Tuition fee reductions could prevent students from having to choose between their own safety and value for money, enabling them to make more informed decisions about how they choose to spend their time this academic year.

Without a fee reduction to justify an inferior experience, the government is forcing students physically back to campuses and putting people at risk.

The consequences of this government’s attitude to higher education could be fatal. Their obsession with ideological “culture wars” has clouded their judgement when it comes to financial support for universities. By Christmas, their refusal to help the sector properly will at best result in thousands of disillusioned students let down by inadequate provision, and at worst result in thousands of Covid-19 infections in university cities, local lockdowns and preventable fatalities.