Jesuit college closes to new undergraduates

HEYTHROP COLLEGE has announced it is no longer accepting undergraduate students in a move that makes a planned partnership with St Mary’s University increasingly necessary in order to secure its future.

The prominent Jesuit college, which this year celebrates its 400th anniversary, has announced it is not recruiting undergraduate students for the academic year beginning in September 2015 due to increasing financial challenges. As an autonomous college of the University of London, it is required to meet the same administrative costs as if it were a university in its own right.

Heythrop, which specialises in theology and philosophy, this year has 658 students, of whom 341 are undergraduates. But undergraduate numbers at the college, based in Kensington, central London, have come under pressure due to the hike in tuition fees of up to £9,000 introduced in 2012, which has forced many students to decide against arts and humanities courses in favour of more vocational degrees.

Heythrop’s accounts for the year ended 2013 show losses of just under £600,000, with another deficit forecast for the end of the current financial year. The accounts also show a £3.5 million subsidy received by the college from the Society of Jesus over a three-year period.

Fr Michael Holman SJ, the principal of Heythrop and former Jesuit provincial of Britain, told The Tablet: “What we have got to do is look for a form of viability which makes us less reliant on the Society of Jesus because its capacity to support us, as it has done so generously for decades, is limited.”

Fr Holman said the opening of talks with St Mary’s in Twickenham, south-west London, had been driven by “administrative overheads” and that the college no longer had the economies of scale needed.

A decision on the partnership is due to be announced by Easter 2015 and Fr Holman said that, without St Mary’s, Heythrop would have an uncertain future as an autonomous college.

Existing undergraduates will be able to finish their University of London degrees while all postgraduate programmes and courses for those training for the priesthood at the college’s Bellarmine Institute will continue. Heythrop currently has 124 full-time ­equivalent postgraduate students, making it one of the largest centres for teaching theology and phil­osophy at postgraduate level in the country.

 Fr Robin Gibbons, who has taught at both Heythrop and St Mary’s, tweeted that the news is a “tragedy for theological HE [higher education] when so many institutions are cutting down on theology and religion”.

Fr Holman said the decision not to offer undergraduate places in 2015 was driven by concern for the “quality of the student experi­ence” for prospective University of London students. He said the question of staff redundancies at Heythrop was not being “looked at … specifically at the moment”, but admitted the college needed to “review its cost base”. “If we were to recruit students in September 2015, that would mean they would finish in 2018, which would be the second year, if things go according to a plan, of a partnership with St Mary’s University,” Fr Holman said.

The decision not to recruit undergraduates for next year was taken following a meeting on Thursday last week, after discussions with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the students’ union and the Jesuits.