Schumacher College, which has been supported by Dartington Hall Trust (DHT) since 1991, has discontinued its degree awarding courses with immediate effect.
The Schumacher College Foundation, wholly owned by DHT, decided at a board meeting on 27 August 2024 to close all BSc, MA and PGDip courses presently supported by University of Plymouth. The courses were already closed to new students.
Schumacher College continues to incur substantial monthly losses and Dartington is unable to underwrite this deficit indefinitely from its limited reserves. The Dartington Board continues to consider viable options for the College to sustain itself, including a proposal from the College’s learning leadership team to secure independence from Dartington, as well as continuation of financially viable, unaccredited courses.
Some 46 students were expected to continue into the 2024/25 academic year with Schumacher and will now be supported to find alternatives, if that is their wish. Teaching staff are supporting 58 other students who are almost at the end of their programme to complete the last academic year, but where some dissertations may be outstanding, marking is to be completed or resits are to be arranged.
The college’s Learning Leadership team has, for some months, been reviewing and considering the accommodation and resource footprint for the delivery of Dartington’s learning provision. However, shorter, unaccredited courses planned by Schumacher for 2024/25 have met with poor bookings.
Robert Fedder, acting CEO of Dartington, said:
“It is with great regret that this decision has had to be made in a very short space of time. The priority is to support every student affected in achieving the best possible outcome for alternative course arrangements or an agreed withdrawal.”
The majority of Schumacher’s 33 staff have been placed in a 30-day consultation period for redundancy. Students have been contacted via a dedicated email channel and Dartington has committed to approach them individually as early as possible in w/c 2 September to discuss courses of action case-by-case.
Mr Fedder added:
“While part of Dartington’s historical role as a charitable trust has been to provide financial support to its long-established learning activities, in this case Schumacher, even when they are unable to break even, the commitment does not extend to risking the future of the whole trust and estate.”
This position was reached in autumn last year, when the very real prospect of appointing administrators prompted the trust to explore the possibility for a turnaround. In the absence of further permitted land sales or availability of assets for disposal, the only remaining option was to reduce operating losses and develop a model for the estate to sustain itself, after decades of shrinking to survive.
Schumacher was, and remains, by some distance, the Trust’s largest loss maker among several operating activities in the red. The turnaround put no additional financial pressures on the college, giving it time to address its financial shortfall: despite its growing deficit and occupying a prime location on the estate, no internal rent has been charged. In any event, monthly losses have continued to grow. Fees are not covering salaries and other day-to-day costs.
Mr Fedder continued:
“There is a long-held misconception among some stakeholders that DHT’s historic attractions and commercial activities, which have clearly faced their own financial challenges, solely exist to fund perennial losses in its educational interests. This is absolutely not the case. Trust staff have worked extremely hard in the last 12 months to secure a sustainable future for the estate.
“Cash outflows of the magnitude presented by Schumacher are an area of very high risk for the Trust, which ultimately still has to maintain, at great cost, several listed buildings and gardens of important historical interest.”
The financial situation at Schumacher reflects the well-documented experience of many higher education establishments in the UK at present. Inflation in recent years has eroded the value of fees paid by UK students, which have been frozen since 2017. In addition, levels of international applicants, particularly postgraduates, have been lower following changes in regulations relating to entry to the UK for students’ families.
An audit commissioned by the University and College Union, published in July 2024, identified 66 universities, more than a third of the UK’s total, as being in financial difficulty.
Any students who, for whatever reason, may not have received a direct communication are urged to make contact with Dartington immediately for further guidance on next steps by emailing studentconsult@dartington.org
Links students may find useful during this period:
Office for Students: www.officeforstudents.org.uk
Student Loans Company: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/student-loans-company
Office of the Independent Adjudicator: www.oiahe.org.uk
