Universities fighting virus need Government support as 60,000 job losses feared: Emma Hardy

However, Covid-19 has shown that our universities are more important than ever in solving the problems we currently face and those in the future. Our ability to survive this pandemic will be partly based on the research happening in our universities and the key workers they are training.

But without the Government financially underwriting universities right now this expertise will not be available in the future. Imagine if we didn’t have the Universities of Leeds, Huddersfield and Hull fast-tracking final- year medical, midwifery and nursing students into the NHS and providing training for former NHS staff re-joining the workforce?

Without universities retraining and fast-tracking health professionals, we would still be trying to fight this virus with a national shortage of 44,000 nurses.

There are many differing opinions on what the exit strategy should be but, as the World Health Organisation said, we need to “test, test, test” and we will need a vaccine.

Without our local universities, Professor SS Vasan from the University of York would not have become the principal investigator in researching new potential vaccines; research would not be happening at the University of Sheffield looking at how Covid-19 is spreading; and we would not be able to use the skills, laboratories and equipment to help with clinical testing.

Our UK universities are world class; three UK universities are in the top 10 and their research will inform the world in how we tackle this virus.

As the heartbreaking stories on the shortages of personal protective equipment filter through, our universities have come to the rescue.

Hull and Huddersfield universities are producing face shields and manufacturing parts for ventilators while the University of Bradford has shipped large amounts of ethanol to local health services to use as hand sanitiser.

There is little doubt that our economy will face a tough recovery and, as yet, we don’t understand the long-term impact on the job market.

Our universities are one of the few large employers offering graduate-level jobs with graduate incomes in the region, but a recent economic paper predicted that a total of 60,000 jobs could be lost in the sector without government support.

Many people will be looking to retrain and reskill so any decline in the number of universities, or the courses they can offer, will impact on the opportunities people have. It would be grossly unfair to have a situation where people living in Yorkshire did not have the equality of opportunities available elsewhere.

It is widely accepted that we can never again face a global epidemic from a position of weakness caused by underfunding of our public sector, and Universities UK has recently requested a package of policy changes to strengthen and enhance the training for 
professional key workers in medicine, nursing, allied health, social work and teaching.

Ultimately, everything depends on the financial support the Government gives because – without it – some higher educational institutions will close and many will reduce courses and capacity.

It is saddening that, despite the economic and social benefits, our universities bring, they can be perceived as disconnected from the regions in which they reside.

This apparent lack of public support no doubt emboldened the Treasury in dismissing the recent proposals from Universities UK, the body representing the country’s universities, for a comprehensive £2bn support package to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The dire financial state of our universities is not exaggerated; the London Economics research forecasts a loss of £2.5bn to universities through the widely predicted fall in student numbers.

During this crisis, our universities have shown that they are prepared to adapt and react to come to the rescue of our country. The Government must be proactive in protecting what is a vital local and national resource, and not wait for individual institutions to be on their knees, because this will result in failure.

We need our universities: we need them to contribute to our economy, retrain and upskill us, to provide the research and solutions to Covid-19. But they need us too.

Now is the time for us to show our universities the same support they are showing us, and to ensure they will be there to provide that same support for generations to come.

Emma Hardy is Labour MP for Hull West & Hessle. She is also Shadow Minister for Further Education and Universities.

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