Tag: deficit

  • Better access to medical school shouldn’t need a deficit model

    Better access to medical school shouldn’t need a deficit model

    Patients benefit from a diverse healthcare workforce. Doctors, particularly those from disadvantaged and minoritised backgrounds, play a crucial role in advocating for what is best for their patients.

    The NHS recognises this, linking workforce diversity with increased patient satisfaction, better care outcomes, reduced staff turnover, and greater productivity.

    A promising start

    Efforts to widen participation in higher education began at the turn of the century following the Dearing report. Over time, access to medical schools gained attention due to concerns about its status as one of the most socially exclusive professions. Medical schools responded in 2014 with the launch of the Selecting for Excellence report and the establishment of the Medical Schools Council (MSC) Selection Alliance, representing admissions teams from every UK medical school and responsible for fair admissions to medical courses.

    With medical school expansion under government review, institutions face increasing pressure to demonstrate meaningful progress in widening participation to secure additional places. Although medicine programmes still lag in representing some demographic groups, they now align more closely with wider higher education efforts.

    However, widening participation policy often follows a deficit model, viewing disadvantaged young people as needing to be “fixed” or “topped up” before joining the profession. Phrases like “raising aspirations” suggest these students lack ambition or motivation. This model shifts responsibility onto individuals, asking them to adapt to a system shaped mainly by the experiences of white, male, middle-class groups.

    Beyond access

    To create real change, organisations must move beyond this model and show that students from diverse backgrounds are not only welcomed but valued for their unique perspectives and strengths. This requires a systems-based approach that rethinks every part of medical education, starting with admissions. In its recent report, Fostering Potential, the MSC reviewed a decade of widening participation in medicine. Medical schools across the UK have increased outreach, introduced gateway year courses, and implemented contextual criteria into admissions.

    Contextual markers recognise structural inequalities affecting educational attainment. Students from low socioeconomic backgrounds often attend under-resourced schools and face personal challenges hindering academic performance. Yet evidence shows that, when given the chance, these students often outperform more advantaged peers at university. Contextual admissions reframe achievements in light of these challenges, offering a fairer assessment of potential.

    Despite progress, access remains unequal. Although acceptance rates for students from the most deprived areas have increased, their chances remain 37 per cent lower than those from the least deprived areas. Research indicates that a two-grade A-level reduction is needed to level the playing field—an approach several schools now adopt. Other policies include fast-tracking interviews, test score uplifts, and alternative scoring for widening participation candidates.

    Not just special cases

    These processes, however, are often opaque and hard to navigate. Many applicants struggle to determine eligibility. With no single definition of disadvantage, medical schools use varied proxy indicators, often poorly explained online. This confusion disproportionately affects the students these policies aim to support; those without university-educated parents, lacking insider knowledge, and attending under-resourced schools.

    A commitment to transparency is vital but must go beyond rhetoric. Transparency means all medical schools clearly outline contextual admissions criteria in one accessible place, provide step-by-step guides to applicants and advisors, and offer examples of how contextual data influences decisions. Medical schools could collaborate to agree on standardised metrics for identifying widening participation candidates. This would simplify eligibility understanding, reduce confusion, and promote fairness.

    Tools like MSC’s entry requirements platform are a good start but must be expanded, standardised, and actively promoted to the communities that need them most. Genuine transparency empowers applicants to make informed choices, selecting schools best suited to their circumstances and maximising success chances. This also eases the burden on schools, advisors, and outreach staff who struggle to interpret inconsistent criteria.

    Ultimately, moving away from the deficit model toward an open, systems-based approach is about more than fairness. It is essential for building a medical workforce that reflects society’s diversity, improving patient care, strengthening the profession, and upholding the NHS’s commitment to equity and excellence.

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  • University of Canberra posts $41m deficit – Campus Review

    University of Canberra posts $41m deficit – Campus Review

    The University of Canberra (UC) posted a $41 million operating deficit for 2024 on Friday after cutting 170 full-time equivalent positions last year.

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  • Temple University eyes job reductions amid $60M deficit for FY26

    Temple University eyes job reductions amid $60M deficit for FY26

    Dive Brief:

    • Temple University President John Fry this week signaled that officials expect to eliminate jobs as the public institution in Philadelphia navigates choppy fiscal waters. 
    • University leaders forecast a $60 million structural deficit for fiscal 2026, Fry said in an announcement to the Temple community. That comes after the university shrank an $85 million projected deficit to $19 million for fiscal 2025. 
    • As the university tries to close the persistent structural deficits, Temple leaders have asked vice presidents and deans to reduce their total compensation spending by 5% across units, Fry said. “Unfortunately, this will result in the elimination of some positions,” he added.

    Dive Insight:

    Over fiscal 2025, Temple shrank its deficit by tightly controlling hiring, travel and other discretionary spending. Nonetheless, long-term enrollment declines have weighed on the budget.

    “For the previous years that we had a structural deficit, university reserves were used to cover expenses, which is not a sustainable practice,” Fry said. “We must work toward achieving a structurally balanced budget where our expenses do not exceed revenues going forward.” 

    Specifically, Fry pointed to a drop of 10,000 students from fall 2017 levels, with much of that dip occurring during the pandemic. As of fall 2023, Temple’s enrollment totaled 30,205 students. 

    The declines, Fry noted, have translated into a roughly $200 million falloff in tuition revenue.

    However, Fry pointed to “positive indicators” for the class of 2029. He said Temple is on track for its second consecutive year of increases in first-year students.

    But while enrollment is still being rebuilt, state appropriations have remained flat and operating costs have increased.   

    “For this reason, fiscal year 2026 — and the next two years — will continue to be challenging until we significantly grow overall enrollment and identify new revenue sources,” Fry said. “In short, we have some difficult but necessary decisions to make over the next three fiscal years.”

    Employee compensation accounts for 62% of operating expenses, which is why university leaders are homing in on those costs. Even so, the university is planning a 1.5% increase in the budget for merit salary raises. 

    The university is also making capital investments, including building a new home for its public health college and an arts pavilion. Fry noted that these projects are funded with donations and state money. 

    Temple is far from alone in its austerity measures. 

    In recent months, both public and private universities have undertaken some combination of hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, tuition hikes and other measures to address funding challenges from both the state and federal level. The Trump administration, for example, has unilaterally slashed grant funding, and congressional Republicans are eyeing policy changes, such as eliminating Grad PLUS loans.

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  • ‘Sobering news’: Sonoma State University makes broad cuts to tackle $24M deficit

    ‘Sobering news’: Sonoma State University makes broad cuts to tackle $24M deficit

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    Dive Brief:

    • Sonoma State University is moving to cut staff, faculty, programs, departments and its athletics programs as it faces a larger-than-expected deficit of nearly $24 million.
    • Interim President Emily Cutrer described the depth of the university’s budget hole as “sobering news.” To manage it, the university is cutting four management positions and 12 staff positions, and it will not renew contracts of 46 tenured and adjunct faculty members for the 2025-26 academic year. 
    • It also plans to axe about two dozen undergraduate and graduate programs. Additionally, it will eliminate its departments of art history, economics, geology, philosophy, theater and dance, and women and gender studies, while consolidating other programs and schools.

    Dive Insight:

    In announcing the cuts at Sonoma State, Cutrer outlined several forces behind the university’s growing budget gap. She cited, in part, inflation — in personnel costs, as well as supplies and utilities. Recent cost escalations led the university to the “unfortunate realization” that its yearslong deficit was even larger than expected, the president said. 

    But the public institution’s chief challenge is enrollment, Cutrer said, noting a 38% decline since its peak in 2015. (Fall headcount stood at just under 6,000 in 2023, per federal data.) Those decreases hit the university’s revenue in tuition and fees as well as in enrollment-based funding from the California State University system. 

    To cope, Sonoma over the past two years has offered buyouts, made “strategic” job cuts and frozen hiring, among other operational moves, Cutrer said. 

    “Unfortunately, the actions taken so far, difficult though they have been, are not enough,” she added. “Further steps must be taken to fully close the budget gap and ensure Sonoma State’s financial capacity to best serve its current and future students and adapt to a changing higher education landscape.” 

    Those steps entail broad-based cuts. On the chopping block is a wide range of programs, including bachelor’s programs in art, economics, physics, philosophy and many others. Some master’s programs are also slated to be cut, among them Spanish, English and public administration. 

    Meanwhile, other programs will be consolidated. For example, Sonoma’s departments of American multicultural studies, Chicano and Latino studies, and Native American studies are set to merge into an ethnic studies department with a single major under it. 

    Also making headlines is Sonoma’s decision to end its Division II NCAA athletics programs after the current academic year, which was made after a “thorough review of the university’s financial necessities and long-term sustainability,” the institution said. Sonoma plans to honor the scholarships of current student athletes and to support those who decide to transfer to another school, such as by helping them obtain their transcripts.

    Expected savings from the cuts include:

    • $8 million in reduced instructional costs. 
    • $3.8 million from reorganization.
    • $3.7 million from cutting athletics. 
    • $3.3 million from hiring freeze.  
    • $1.3 million from university-wide budget reductions.

    Cutrer said the round of cuts likely represent the “large majority” Sonoma will have to make this year, but she warned more could be necessary as it discusses shared services with Cal State.

    Sonoma is by no means the only public institution in California making cuts. The Cal State and University of California systems are both scrambling to manage potential reductions in state funding amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars after Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his latest budget proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year. 

    After the proposal’s release earlier this month, Cal State — facing a state funding reduction of $375 million — said that a “shortfall of this magnitude will negatively impact academic programming, student services, course offerings and the CSU workforce.”

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  • Brown faces $46 million budget deficit

    Brown faces $46 million budget deficit

    Brown University, one of the nation’s wealthiest institutions, is facing a $46 million structural deficit, prompting efforts to limit growth in hiring and doctoral programs.

    “Without changes to the way Brown operates, the structural deficit is expected to continue to deepen significantly, including a deficit next year that would grow to more than $90 million, with steady increases in subsequent years. Although the current deficit of $46 million is only 3% of Brown’s total operating budget, increases in the deficit over time are not sustainable,” Provost Francis J. Doyle III and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Sarah Latham announced in a letter to the community on Dec. 17.

    Officials noted a range of factors driving the deficit, including flat undergraduate tuition revenue growth, increased financial aid, inflation and rising salaries and benefits.

    Brown announced a four-pronged plan to “constrain the deficit.”

    First, the institution will “hold faculty headcount growth to 1%” and limit the growth of staff members “not fully funded externally by grants and gifts” at zero percent, according to the letter from administrators. In addition, Brown will reduce admissions targets for Ph.D. programs, which have grown rapidly in recent years. The university also plans to “hold growth in unrestricted operating expenses to 3%.” Finally, the letter noted the university will work to “continue to grow master’s [program] revenue, ultimately doubling the number of residential master’s students and increasing online learners to 2,000 in five years.”

    While officials did not announce job cuts as they grapple with the yawning budget deficit, the message noted Brown will review vacancies “to determine if they will be refilled.”

    Brown is among the richest universities in the U.S. with an endowment valued at $7.2 billion. Last year, a study of endowments put Brown just beyond the top 25 wealthiest institutions.

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