Proposed changes to CCE courses
The University is proposing that, at the end of the 2011-12 academic year (July 2012), it will stop offering loss-making short courses currently provided by the Centre for Community Engagement (CCE).
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Farthing, said: “We regret that this proposal would end evening classes and day schools which have been enjoyed by local people over the years. However, given the government’s policies regarding the funding of higher education, the University can no longer support such courses.
“There is no public funding for non-degree courses such as these that don’t lead to qualifications, and no evidence that fees can be set at a high enough level to cover their costs. We sadly cannot justify subsidising them from fees paid by our undergraduate and postgraduate students.”
CCE activity has already undergone significant change in recent years as the government withdrew funding for Equivalent and Lower Qualifications (ELQs) – i.e. removing funding for those already holding a higher degree. In 2008-09, the University ceased to enrol new students in CCE degree-level programmes, and the last part-time cohort will finish in 2012-13.
While, under the current proposal, loss-making short courses would cease at the end of July 2012, the University is sustaining other CCE activity where it can do so – including the International Summer School and the teaching of sign language and Deaf Studies. The Horizons community learning project in Hastings, formerly in CCE, transferred to a CIC (community interest company) earlier in the autumn so that it could continue to operate.
The Director of Finance, Allan Spencer, said: “The University receives no government or public funding for short courses. Together with contract work in CCE, these courses bring in around £300,000 a year. But this doesn’t cover the cost of running the courses, and there is an annual deficit of around £350,000.
“Without an annual subsidy from elsewhere in the University, evening classes and day schools would require very steep rises in fees to make them cover their costs. This is why most other universities either do not run evening classes, or have ceased to offer them in recent years.”
The University is consulting with unions and staff on the implications for staffing, exploring how it can remove, reduce or ameliorate the potential loss of posts.
Twelve academic members of staff and three professional services staff in CCE are at risk of redundancy.
There are also 127 people on hourly paid contracts who have taught for a number of hours a week for CCE over recent years. Not all of these people work for CCE every year: around 50 people on these contracts have done some CCE teaching this year and, in terms of hours worked, this equated to around 10 FTE in 2010-11.
The ending of these courses will not alter the wide and significant range of other community engagement in which the University is involved across the 12 schools of studies and from its professional services.
The CCE proposal does not relate to continuing professional development courses offered by other departments in the University, nor to the open language courses offered by the Sussex Centre for Language Studies.