Read: The latest No. 10 proposals for higher education is both misconceived and anti-levelling up.
It’s clear this proposal will disproportionately impact more disadvantaged people from more disadvantaged communities.
It ignores why they are dropping out and whether a better approach might be to support them to tackle those issues, whether financial or getting better advice on choosing the right course.
It ignores that 80% of students financially benefit from going to university, is a significant success rate. And the real success rate is probably higher as Government statistics only focus on initial earnings outcomes, when for less well connected students, less access to networks and advice mean it can take longer for them to achieve success post graduation.
That is as much a reflection of the fact this country works too much based on who you know not what you know. Connected and privileged students earn more post graduation than their disadvantaged peers as this recent Times Higher Education article describes: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/privilege-pays-rich-graduates-out-earn-disadvantaged-peers.
As it says:
“The best available evidence estimated that young people receiving free school meals earned £8,300 more in annual earnings 15 years after Key Stage 4 if they went to university than those who did not.
However, most research also showed that disadvantaged graduates could expect to earn about £4,000 less than advantaged graduates – even after considering the university attended or subject studied.”
It would have been smarter for policymakers to look at graduate outcomes taking that wider unfairness in access to opportunity into account before judging ‘low value’ courses.
It also ignores that going to university is about more than just the financial returns, it’s the wider social capital that people build whilst they are there, that supports success in later life.
Government cites the Augur Review in proposing this approach but the Augur Review also proposed the reintroduction of maintenance grants for disadvantaged students. That is ignored by this announcement and 4 years on, still left unaddressed.
Meanwhile, for the other route Ministers propose, apprenticeships, there have been no significant reforms to apprenticeships and the apprenticeship levy since I introduced them in 2017 as Education Secretary. Reform is crucial if we’re to see more young people, from all backgrounds, access apprenticeships as an opportunity. Employers - who overwhelmingly want to do offer more apprenticeships are crying out for reform.
To close off one avenue to higher education whilst also failing to address shortcomings in other pathways for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds is unacceptable.
As a child from a working class background, the first person in my family to go to univeristy, I have very personal experience of the benefit of higher education. This policy proposal levels down not up.
Whilst there will always need to be challenge on universities regarding course quality and course outcomes, I hope that the reality of any new approach taken is more measured and evidence-based than today’s negative rhetoric.
The big prize for policymakers and for both parties is to understand that universities are engines of social mobility and fundamental building blocks of opportunity for communities that need them most.
Our campaign “Raising Standards, Creating Opportunities’ in conjunction with our Purpose Coalition Universities sets a whole range of practical steps that universities are already taking to do maximise both their social and economic impact.
More information about the campaign can be found at raisingstandardsextendingopportunity.org
By Rt Hon Justine Greening
