Observations on universities

What nobody seems to have asked about the government's ambitious plan to get 50 per cent of young people in the UK into higher education is who will teach all these students. The Universities and Colleges Employers' Association estimates that 17,000 more lecturers will be needed.

Tucked away in this month's five-year education plan, you will find an extra £35m promised for "staff development". But this does not answer the primary question: can the universities recruit the staff in the first place? The employers say that one-fifth of all universities and higher education colleges experience difficul-ties "most of the time" when recruiting academic staff, a situation that has worsened threefold since 1998. Save British Science reports that 57 per cent of universities leave scientific posts unfilled be-cause of a lack of suitable candidates.

The normal route to an academic career is through postgraduate research, with a PhD now more or less a mandatory qualification. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the numbers pursuing postgraduate study have grown over the past few years, but those enrolled in full- and part-time doctorates have declined steadily. Talk in middle common rooms around the country returns time and again to the question of funding for postgraduate research: where to get it, who has got it, and why there isn't more.

Recent graduates will tell you they have decided against a doctorate because of the prospect of accruing more debts on top of the standard undergraduate's £10,000-plus burden. To take a PhD, many have first to fund themselves through an MA, paying tuition fees as well as living costs. Then they must pay for a further three-year course. Annual tuition fees for a full-time DPhil at Sussex University, for example, were £2,940 in 2003-2004.

There is no mandatory support for postgraduate study, though funding is available for a lucky few. Some might find a scholarship and sufficient teaching to get by. Funding bodies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the universities' own awards cover costs for others. But the research board has been able to fund only 30 per cent of the applications it has received since 2000.

Nor are there sufficient opportunities to borrow. Career development loans are available from major banks as part of a partnership with the Department for Education and Skills, but these have an upper limit of £8,000 - not enough to cover three years of fees, never mind living costs. Worse, these loans do not come with the favourable interest rates reserved for student loans, leaving many postgraduates reliant on the goodwill of parents. At the end of this tough road, the pay is not competitive with comparable jobs in either the private or the public sector.

Those who still believe that leisure and job interest compensate for low pay in academia are ill-informed. Academic work is a job like any other and it does not suit everybody. A friend who recently opted out found academic life too slow and unsociable. The problem is that few get to make the choice. A "self-selection" process weeds out the rich from the poor instead of the gifted from the rest.

We should not go on measuring commitment to a career by the amount of money that someone is willing to spend to achieve it. And if 50 per cent of young people are going to enter higher education, we had better start by finding their teachers.

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