06 | NEWS | NEWS AND CURRENT AF FAIRS
Tuition-fee savings THE GOVERNMENT PAYS £24,500
PER STUDENT PER YEAR IN TEACHING GRANTS TO
UNIVERSITIES AND MAINTENANCE GRANTS TO STUDENTS
REMOVING THE CAP ON STUDENT NUMBERS AND ADDING AN EXTRA 60,000 STUDENTS
EACH YEAR WOULD COST THE GOVERNMENT AN EXTRA
£1.7BN THE IFS CALCULATES TAXPAYER
CONTRIBUTIONS TO UNIVERSITY TUITION ARE NOW ONLY
5% LOWER
THAN THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN UNDER THE PRE-2012 SYSTEM
Equipment sharing toolkit leads the way
A unique toolkit has been developed to make it easier for universities to share research equipment in order to increase research excellence and improve effi ciencies. The N8 Equipment Sharing
Toolkit aims to address many of the operational issues that can arise when university research equipment is shared. Comprising a set of guiding principles and templates, it covers four key areas: Health and Safety, Pricing and Charging, Contracts and Legal, and VAT. The toolkit was developed
by a team chaired by Sarah Fulton, Director of Research and Innovation Services at the University of Sheffi eld, who
said: “We hope that the N8 Equipment Sharing Toolkit will enable both individual academics and research groups to fi nd the most appropriate solution for their circumstances.” Collaboration increases
the impact of research by allowing capital items too large for a single university to be purchased, ensuring researchers have access to state- of-the-art equipment such as the N8 High Performance Computer. The Toolkit also
complements the N8 Shared Research Equipment Inventory – a fully searchable online database containing more than 3,800 pieces of research
ABOVE: Sarah Fulton
equipment across the N8 universities. The database enables greater clustering of equipment, and creates opportunities for more eff ective usage of research capability and resource across the N8 universities and the private sector. It is envisaged that in time, the N8 Equipment Sharing Toolkit will be used to make university
research equipment available to business. The N8 Research Partnership
is leading the Asset Sharing workstrand, which forms part of the next phase of work on effi ciency and eff ectiveness in universities, led by Universities UK and chaired by Professor Sir Ian Diamond. Professor Sir Ian Diamond
said: "We know that the funding environment will continue to be diffi cult, and so, working with colleagues in BIS, I am pleased that we are launching a second phase of work on effi ciency and eff ectiveness in universities. The N8 equipment sharing toolkit is a vital part of our programme."
A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said that ministers will not know for decades whether their 2012 higher education funding shake-up will save money. The study found the public cost
of higher fees and loans is "highly uncertain" and depends on how much future graduates will earn. The report looks at the group of
English, full-time undergraduates who started university in 2012 – the fi rst year of the new fees system. It calculates 57p of every £1 the government loans to students will be recouped. On top of that, the government is
paying £24,500 per student per year in teaching grants to universities and maintenance grants to students. The IFS calculates taxpayer
contributions to university tuition are now only 5% lower than they would have been under the pre-2012 system, when universities were given much bigger teaching grants from central government. A rise in tuition fees of £500 a year would
increase the taxpayer contribution under the new system of loans to that of the old one, it says. And it estimates removing the cap on student numbers and adding an extra 60,000 students each year would cost the government an extra £1.7bn.
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