One in four university courses axed in England but few cut in Scotland

The number of full-time undergraduate courses on offer at UK universities has fallen by more than a quarter (27%) since 2006, according to a new report published by the University and College Union.

Of the four UK countries, England has suffered the greatest reduction in choice at a time when tuition fees are about to rise to as much as £9,000 (US$14,000) a year.

Sir Richard Roberts, Nobel laureate for medicine or physiology and chief scientific officer at the New England Biolabs, said: “One of the hallmarks of a British education in my earlier years was the very breadth of subject matter that could be studied and that our policies are now seeking to restrict. While this may make economic sense it is almost guaranteed to lead to the deterioration of the human mind and its opportunities for innovation.”

The report, Choice Cuts: How choice has declined in higher education, reveals that the number of undergraduate courses available has decreased from 70,052 in 2006 to 51,116 in 2012, despite an increase in student numbers.

The report analysed data from the universities admission service, UCAS, to determine which areas of the UK have been hit hardest in course reduction, with large disparities emerging between regions and each of the home nations.

For students in England the range of options has narrowed considerably. England suffered the biggest reduction in the number of undergraduate courses (31%), compared to 3% in Scotland, 11% in Wales and 24% in Northern Ireland.

The UCU argued that there was a link between the rate of course cuts and levels of tuition fee charges in each of these countries.

While tuition fees for full-time undergraduates from the UK at higher education institutions in England will rise to up to £9,000 a year in 2012-13, Northern Ireland-domiciled students studying in Northern Ireland will only have to pay £3,465, Welsh-domiciled undergraduates studying throughout the UK will only have to pay £3,465, and Scottish-domiciled undergraduates studying in Scotland will not have to pay any fees.

However, within the regions of England there is also a wide range in the extent of course cutting. Nearly half (47%) of undergraduate courses have been cut in the south-west, but only 1.4% of courses have gone in the East Midlands. London, which last week was ranked second only to Paris as the best city in the world for students, is offering 33% fewer undergraduate courses than in 2006, as is the West Midlands.

As well as looking at the overall number of courses available, the report analysed the provision of principal, or single-subject, degree courses in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM subjects), arts and humanities, and social sciences.

Single-subject STEM courses are down 15%, and arts and humanities down 14%. German and French studies are no longer available as a single subject in eastern England and the north-east.

Sally Hunt, the UCU’s general secretary, said: “While successive governments have been dreaming up new ways to increase the cost of going to university, the range of subjects available to students has fallen massively. As student numbers have continued to rise, choice has fallen across almost all disciplines, including STEM subjects, which governments have pledged to protect.”

She said the UK's global academic reputation was built on the broad range of subjects available and on the freedom of academics to push at the boundaries and create new areas of study. But the report showed that, while government rhetoric is all about students as consumers, the curriculum has actually narrowed significantly.

“If we want to compete globally, we simply cannot have areas of the country where students do not have access to a broad range of courses."

But Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that given how mobile the student population is there was no need for all courses to be offered everywhere, and no reason to assume that the previous number of courses was correct.

“Much more concerning are signs that the total number of student places at universities is being cut,” he said. “Rationalising the number of courses and making more efficient use of the resources that are available isn't necessarily a bad thing.”

In the report, Roberts said: “These days it seems universities are increasingly being treated as technical colleges from which graduates will emerge with some very specialised skills. This is a huge mistake.”

Professor Donald Braben, honorary professor in life sciences at University College London, said: “All major developments in the last century were unpredicted. Take the internet: were the universities being urged to offer lessons on the internet in the 70s and 80s? Industrial opinion notoriously changes with their balance sheets. If we gear institutions solely to what we perceive students and employers want then that is precisely what we will get. Stagnation will follow.”

Professor Philip Schofield, professor of the history of legal and political thought, and director of the Bentham Project at University College London, said restricting choice meant giving the less well-informed control over the better-informed on the very question of what they need to be informed about.