VC's Voice

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We are now well into the process of setting budgets for next year. For Sussex, as for most universities, this involves facing up to some unwelcome arithmetic. The government has treated higher education better than its predecessors were planning to do, but the treatment is still far from generous.

New money has been put into a variety of schemes (such as the Joint Infrastructure Fund) to repair the damage of past neglect of equipment and infrastructure. But successful bids to these schemes at best require new expenditure to match the income received, and in some cases require us to put up matching funds from our own resources. They don't give us extra money to spend as we choose. Our core funding for teaching and research is still subject to "efficiency gains", that is to say, cuts.

Next year's budget poses a particular challenge because of the forthcoming research assessment exercise in 2001. New academic appointments are needed to replace gaps in our research portfolio, and every research-active academic post at the 2001 census date will count in the calculation of research income for the following four or five years.

There are other priorities. We have to improve the quality of the student experience if we are to remain attractive to well-qualified student applicants. That means expenditure on maintenance and improvement of buildings. Leaking roofs and poorly equipped lecture theatres will not attract students.

It would be a mistake to see next year's situation as being unusually difficult. The pressures will continue. The government will continue to give higher priority to further education than higher education. The political need to restrain taxation means that mass higher education can never be funded in the way that elite higher education was.

As an institution, therefore, if we maintain our dependence on government funding we have to reconcile ourselves to annual belt-tightening. A better alternative is to aim to reduce our dependence on our traditional sources of funding. We are setting targets for income generation in next year's budget, and we should start planning now to meet much more ambitious targets in future years.

There are already academic developments and plans under way that will contribute to meeting these targets. There are promising new courses and research-funding initiatives in biological sciences. The University's investment in manufacturing engineering is beginning to generate new income. SEI has developed a new diploma that has recruited a large number of overseas students. New programmes are being planned in the health-related social sciences. Collaboration in computer science between COGS and ENGG is another promising area that deserves exploration.

Looking further ahead, we have to prepare for fundamental changes in the public funding regime. At the moment, there are controls on the numbers of home students we recruit and on the fees we charge. Very few observers of the UK higher education system believe that these controls can be maintained indefinitely. When they are relaxed, we will have to survive and prosper in a much more competitive climate.