Government Reduces Funding, Tells Universities to Prioritise STEM Over Media Studies

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said this focus will support the future skills needed and the government’s industrial strategy for economic growth.

Britain's secretary of state for education, Bridget Phillipson, arrives to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on May 20, 2025. Carl Court/Getty Images

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has told the Office for Students (OfS) that government funding should be diverted away from subjects like media studies and towards the sciences.

The minister made the recommendations on Monday as she told the sector regulator that the Strategic Priorities Grant would total £1.348 billion for financial year 2025/26, which is £108 million less than last year.

The recurrent grant, distributed by the OfS, provides support to universities in the delivery of strategically important, high-cost subjects, such as the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

She also confirmed that the capital grant would be £84 million next year, almost half the £150 million annual average allocated as part of a £450 million agreed capital grant budget for the previous three years.

In her letter to the OfS’s Interim Chairman Sir David Behan, Phillipson said the funding allocations were made against the backdrop of the country’s “extremely challenging fiscal context.” She added that government officials will be working with the sector regulator to closely monitor funding projects, and, where appropriate, claw back any unused funding.

High Priority Areas

In more detailed instructions to Behan, the education secretary said that Strategic Priority Grants should be focused on “the highest priority areas.”

These include very high-cost STEM subjects; nursing, midwifery, and other allied health professions such as in radiology and emergency services; and other high-cost, strategically-important courses.

The minister said this focus will support the future skills needed and the government’s industrial strategy for economic growth.

She told the universities regulator: “Prioritising in this way does, however, involve making compromises elsewhere; for this reason, I am asking you to reprioritise high-cost subject funding away from media studies, journalism, publishing and information services courses.

“While I recognise that these courses are valued by the universities that deliver them and the students that take them, my decision is informed by the challenging fiscal context we have inherited.”

The OfS’s director for fair access and participation, John Blake, said it was continuing to consider its approach to how it uses its funding powers, and had received feedback from across the sector following a recent call for evidence.

“We'll publish that feedback as part of our continuing work with government to review and reform our approach to funding,” Blake said.

‘Another Blow to Universities’

Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group, said in a statement: “The Strategic Priorities Grant ‘savings’ announced today are another blow to universities already facing stark financial challenges. Let’s call them what they are: these are cuts.”

He said that while he appreciated efforts to protect funding on high-cost subjects like medicine and nursing, “the flat cash settlement for those subjects still represents a real-terms cut, with other areas cut further.”

Students and family pose for photographs ahead of their graduation ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on July 15, 2014. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Universities UK (UUK) told The Epoch Times in a statement that the university system “is under extraordinary financial pressure,” with Monday’s announcement “making an already difficult situation worse.”

Chief Executive of UUK Vivienne Stern said, “Funding per student has declined by about a third in the last decade. International student recruitment has fallen, national insurance and pension contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme have gone up, and research grants cover less than 70 percent of the actual costs.”

Stern said that UUK is determined to ensure that universities continued to deliver high quality education and research and economic growth.

“But we need government to work with us to stabilise the ship and put it back on an even keel. That is the opposite of what happened [on Monday],” she added.

2 in 5 Facing Deficits

Universities are under financial strain and many institutions have already undertaken action to cut costs, including staff redundancies, merging or closing programmes, and shuttering departments.

Two weeks ago, the OfS predicted that two in five universities face deficits this academic year.

The regulator’s analysis had identified several factors affecting higher education institutions’ income, including a lower than expected recruitment of overseas students, the declining real-terms value of tuition fees from UK undergraduates, rising maintenance and capital costs, and broader inflation-driven pressures on operating expenses.

Phillipson said at the time, “These concerning figures are further evidence demonstrating why the increase to tuition fees and the package of reforms I announced last year were necessary.”

She continued: “The dire situation we inherited has meant this government must take tough decisions to put universities on a firmer financial footing, so they can deliver more opportunity for students and growth for our economy through our Plan for Change.

“I asked the Office for Students to refocus their efforts on monitoring financial sustainability last year. Further reforms are needed to fix the foundations of higher education, and universities must do more to make their finances work.”