Course extension briefly threatened SoP viability
London University's School of Pharmacy was secretly placed on a list of academic institutions under serious financial risk in the late 1990s when the pharmacy degree was being extended from three to four years.
The list was drawn up by the Higher Education Funding Council for England
and obtained by The Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
School of Pharmacy dean Anthony Smith said: “The school only learnt
two weeks ago that in the late 1990s it had been placed on an ‘at
risk’ list by the funding council.”
Professor Smith added that the School of Pharmacy was only on the list
temporarily in the transition from the three-year BPharm degree to the
four-year MPharm degree. Financial projections at the time showed that
the school had to support a third more students before the HEFC confirmed
the additional funding to support them. “Once confirmed, the school’s
financial predictions showed excellent health to match its outstanding
academic health,” Professor Smith said.
Adding a year to the undergraduate pharmacy degree would have made the
School of Pharmacy’s finances look insecure at the time because
it was an independent institution deriving a large proportion of its
HEFC funding for just one course.
Other institutions included on the HEFC’s at-risk list included
De Montfort University and Liverpool John Moores University, both of
which offer pharmacy degrees among a wide range of other courses.
In 2000, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society withheld
accreditation of the pharmacy course at Liverpool John Moores University because of concerns
over the curriculum and the resources the university had made available
for its delivery (PJ, 12 August 2000, p218).
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