Closures on the cards

A number of universities will disappear over the next 10 years as the government removes the safety net for institutions that fail to attract enough students, Margaret Hodge, the higher education minister, has warned.

Others will expand to teach the 400,000 extra students that the Department for Education and Skills estimates would be needed to reach the government's target of 50% of young people participating in higher education, she told a Social Market Foundation seminar last week.

Her words added to the anxieties of academics in the new universities who feel they will be victims of the current funding regime, which protects the research funding of the elite institutions but is removing the cap on student numbers and the financial safety net which benefited former polytechnics. A number of new universities have suffered funding cuts this year with Luton, South Bank and Lincoln worst hit.

Hodge said there would be a different pattern of higher education in 10 years' time, with a blurring of the boundaries between universities, further education colleges and even schools. For some universities the way forward would be in partnership with local colleges, as had already happened at Derby and is under discussion at Bradford University.

Some universities would have gone and others expanded - lifting the cap on student numbers and removing the safety netting were two steps in that direction, she told the seminar.

"Universities must focus more clearly on what they do best. For some that will be research of international importance. For others it will be excellent teaching to meet our widening participation agenda; for others engagement in their regional and local economies," she said.

She was challenged at the seminar by David Green, pro-vice-chancellor of Thames Valley University, who said: "The institutions you are going to end up closing are the former polytechnics." He said their chance to become "upwardly mobile" by demonstrating good scores in teaching quality had now been scrapped, the ending of the cap on student numbers meant more prestigious institutions could attract extra students and the safety net was being withdrawn.

Mergers are seen by the Higher Education Funding Council for England as more likely than outright closures, although it does not rule out the possibility. It has contributed £6.6m towards the merger of London Guildhall University and the University of North London. Manchester University and neighbouring Umist are talking about creating a new institution and this confirms a trend towards mergers. Others, like Greenwich and Kent universities, are collaborating to expand into new areas - in their case the Medway area of Kent.

Deian Hopkin, vice-chancellor of South Bank, said new universities faced a market where social Darwinism was encouraged and they had to reaffirm what they did best rather than try to emulate traditional institutions. South Bank is focusing on vocational education with a slogan "a London university offering London people access to London jobs" and describing itself as "teaching-led" although it will continue to do research.

"A lot of new universities may have been tempted post-1992 to claim the same territory as old universities - research and recruitment of A-level students - and for some that policy was unwise."

Fears that these changes will lead to a two-tier system were raised last week by Ian Gibson, Labour chairman of the Commons science and technology committee. One of the prime minister's informal business advisers, Lord Browne, the chief executive of BP Amoco and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, is understood to be backing proposals to prioritise government money to a select group of world-class research institutions.

Sir Howard Newby, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, denied there would be any formal premier league. Speaking at a conference on the future of the research assessment exercise at the University of Greenwich, Sir Howard said: "There is no intention to stop any institution doing research; nor is there any intention of reintroducing a binary line [splitting the sector]."