David Willetts addresses business schools and launches HE

David Willetts, the universities and science minister, will today give a speech to the Association of Business Schools and address a reception held to mark the launch of HE from Research Fortnight

Business schools dislike being treated as cash cows by the universities in which many are based. Because their MBA courses are designed for postgraduates, they are free to set tuition fees at whatever the market will bear. Because their graduates are likely to earn top whack, the tuition fees tend to be eye watering. And because business does not require expensive laboratories in which to teach, it is also relatively cheap to provide. The combination is a lucrative one.

In the past Mr Willetts has suggested that business schools should not spend the money they get from tuition fees on research but instead use it to enhance the student experience. Certainly business school students are already pampered: tales abound of institutions where only business school students may use the business school canteen, which is well stocked with crayfish and avocado sandwiches that are not for sale to the hoi polloi. But what exercises business school academics most is not how to spend the funds they raise but how to keep as much of them inhouse as possible. Mr Willetts’s arguments against cross-subsidies are employed in an attempt not to end the use of teaching funds to pay for research, rather to end the use of business school funds for to pay for other university departments. Mr Willetts’s speech to the Association of Business Schools today is likely to be twisted to this purpose by academics.