Funding gap making vet education ‘unsustainable’

UK veterinary education’s most senior leader has told MPs the sector is “not a sustainable business” because of the “enormous” gap between rising costs and falling funding.

VSC chairperson Stuart Reid laid out the scale of the challenge faced by universities when he gave evidence to the Commons EFRA select committee on 12 March.

He also warned the position would be made even more difficult by reducing the number of overseas students who can enrol.

Although academics and veterinary sector leaders have made repeated calls for an increase in Government funding, there has been little sign of a breakthrough in recent times.

Frozen

Annual tuition fees for UK students have remained frozen at a maximum of £9,250 for the past seven years, while the committee also heard teaching funding had only risen by 4% over the same period.

Prof Reid, who is also principal of the RVC, said its costs had gone up by 15%-18% since 2012-13 while its funding had dropped by between 15% and 30% over the same period, adding: “That gap is enormous.”

He added that although audited costs were estimated at £27,000 to £32,000 per student, vet schools in England and Wales were only getting around £20,000 per student from the central grant and tuition fees, while the equivalent figure in Scotland is even lower at around £17,500.

He said: “It is not a sustainable business.”

Extra revenues

One way in which vet schools can generate extra revenues is through the recruitment of international students who can be charged far more for their tuition than their UK classmates. The lowest advertised international student fee for a UK veterinary medicine degree course in the 2024-25 academic year is £33,000.

The practice has attracted broader recent controversy, though, following newspaper allegations that wealthy overseas students could effectively buy their way on to courses without meeting the same admission requirements as UK entrants.

Meanwhile, the Government has asked for an urgent review of the graduate entry route, which currently allows students to remain in the UK for up to two years after completing an undergraduate degree programme.

In a letter to the Migration Advisory Committee earlier this month, the Home Secretary, James Cleverly, said the review could examine whether the programme is “undermining the integrity and quality of the UK higher education system”.

But while he acknowledged there had been recent increases in the number of students enrolling on veterinary degree programmes, and most vet schools were working at capacity, Prof Reid suggested that trend would not last for long without overseas admissions.

‘Harsh reality’

Prof Reid said: “It is not that international students are displacing home students. They are actually allowing us to take home students. If we take fewer international students or students paying unregulated fees, then we will be taking fewer home students as well. That is the harsh reality.”

He also highlighted discussion of a “30-year horizon” in solving veterinary workforce challenges in North America as a indication that addressing the same issues here would not be a short task either.

Two new UK vet schools have opened in recent years, while a third at the SRUC is expected to begin its own degree programmes this autumn.

But Prof Reid said: “What we need to recognise, though, is pulling that lever of increasing capacity is at least a five-year horizon from the day they open, and planning would probably be two years before that. So there is a long way to go before we start filling that deficit.”