Education funding cuts will betray a generation of learners warns UCU

UCU today warned that planned cuts to higher and further education would betray a generation of learners. Responding to today's university survey by the Daily Telegraph, which revealed that over 200,000 qualified applicants could be rejected as institutions are forced to reduce budgets, the union said the country was facing a huge skills deficit.
 
The union pointed to the fact that the UK's participation rate for academic degrees had plummeted from seventh to fifteenth among OECD countries in the last 12 years.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Warnings of a lost generation of young people are not misplaced. It is the frightening reality we are likely to face if the government pursues its current cuts agenda.  Last year over 100,000 people failed to find a place at university, and that number now looks set to rise to over 200,000.
 
'They represent a grotesque scandal of unfulfilled potential that will come back to haunt this country. We cannot afford to allow this skills gap to develop. As David Willetts's acknowledged last week, the UK's participation rate for academic degrees puts us fifteenth among OECD countries, down from seventh in 1998. How can denying thousands of qualified applicants the chance to study at university be in the interests of this country?'