Capacity and utilisation
Student residence
Finance
Fees
Student support
vi
10. It is not possible to give precise figures for capacity and utilisation. This is partly because the university and maintained sectors use different measures of capacity; and partly because the border-line between accommodation for advanced and non-advanced courses in the maintained sector is inexact. It is clear that there are at present two major areas of under-utilisation. One is accommodation in former colleges of education left vacant by the reduction in teacher training numbers but not yet taken up by students on other types of course. The other is departmental science accommodation in the universities, where an estimated 20,000 science places are at present either unused or used for non-science purposes. But growth to a total of 560,000 full-time and sandwich students by 1981 should fill up most if not all of the presently under-utilised accommodation in both sectors.
11. At present, about two-fifths of full-time and sandwich higher education students live in institution-provided accommodation; a similar proportion are in privately rented accommodation; the rest live at home. Privately rented accommodation is diminishing and students face increasing competition from other single persons. But shortage of accommodation is proving less of a problem than was feared when the 1981/82 higher education planning figure was 750,000 students. Some local housing authorities have made available for student use some "short-life" buildings and some which are otherwise difficult to let; and this has afforded some relief both in the maintained sector (which has a smaller proportion of institution-provided accommodation) and in the universities. Both sectors have benefited from the limited amount of new purpose-built student residence coming into use.
12. The Government has no statutory power of direct control over higher education fees in the university sector and only limited statutory powers (used only in Scotland) in respect of the public sector. However, it does recommend fee levels for various types of course, and the Rate Support Grant and the Universities Recurrent Grant settlements assume that those recommendations are generally followed.
13. So far as full-time and sandwich courses are concerned, in practice only overseas students and a minority of home students (perhaps 5%) have to pay their own fees. For 1977/78, recommended fee levels have been increased: they now cover about 20% of gross recurrent costs (taking advanced and non-advanced courses as a whole); the latest public expenditure White Paper assumes that the savings in which this increase is resulting in 1977/78 will be carried through to 1981/82.
14. The arrangements for student support are complex in detail; and no more than a general summary is necessary for the purposes of this paper. Most UK residents on full-time and sandwich first degree and comparable courses are eligible for mandatory awards from their local education authorities or from the Scottish Education Department. The awards cover fees and a basic maintenance grant related both to means and to the student's residential base. Grant rates are reviewed annually to take account of inflation. The current average net grant after deduction of contributions and excluding fees is estimated at about £750.
15. Postgraduate awards are made by the two Departments and by the Research Councils. They too cover both fees and maintenance, the latter at a level up to 45% more than non-postgraduate maintenance grants.
16. Assistance to part-time students is left to the discretion of local authorities because of the very wide range of courses taken part-time, the
different circumstances in which they are taken and the consequent wide variation in the needs of the students.