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COMMENT: Cuts are bad news for city and university

8:10am Tuesday 9th February 2010 in


GOVERNMENT cuts to university funding are bad news for thousands of prospective students and bad news for growing university cities like Worcester.

More than 570,000 people have applied to start university this autumn but with fewer places available than last year as many as 100,000 may miss out on a place.

Some will not have won a place anyway. But many more will be defeated by money rather than ability.

At the same time the University of Worcester has to put on hold parts of its ambitious plans for a £100m city centre campus on the former Royal Infirmary site. The university needs increased student numbers to fuel its expansion.

Government action is putting the brake on the university’s spectacular growth, albeit temporarily. The sooner it is all systems go again for the university the better it will be for the future prosperity of Worcester.

Comments(4)

MrStJohns says...
9:26am Tue 9 Feb 10

Another thing to thank labour for, While it may seem somewhat alarming. Worcester is not alone in the in fact there are hundreds of institutions up and down the country are in the same boat. The university of Gloucester has had to sell various parts of its campus, so in comparison Worcester is fairing much better, due to how popular it is and the standard of education. I agree it is a shame that the third phase of the development is to be moth balled, until funding can be secured, however I wouldn’t worry that it will remain moth balled for long as Worcester university is exceptionally lucky in having an excellent management team, that will continue to push forward the development and in no way let the slow down effect the popularity of the university or its positive effects on Worcester.

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crowquill says...
11:27am Tue 9 Feb 10

Add Pershore college to the list also.
The campus redevelopment there is on hold indefinitely after being approved by the now bankrupt LSC. The funding has been reduced by 25% over the next three years and the staff are now facing their forth round of compulsory redundancies in last two years!
Perhaps Mr Foster would like to comment on what a marvelous job his party is doing of managing the education system!

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MrStJohns says...
11:55am Tue 9 Feb 10

You can add every campus up and down the country crowquil, Hereford who had hoped to build a new university, are looking at scrapping the plan entirely. Some have suffered far worse than Worcester. I always like to put abit of perspective as it helps all the moaners get a grip. You are totally correct crowquil after Labour ploughed millions upon millions into the system at all levels, and yet they still manage to run out of money. All I can say is it’s a good job we have who we do running Worcester university because things could have been a lot worse. I to would love to hear how MR foster feels about this, still battling away for Worcester are we? id be applying for lecturing jobs asap, its only a few months now until election time.

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BarryB says...
7:13pm Tue 9 Feb 10

I thought that the battle between the only two parties that count is based on the issue of Labour investment and Tory cuts. Can someone tell me if I have made a mistake and it is the other way round. But then, after "education, education, education", Labour would not be so crass as to "cut" the education budget -would they?

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