“Education, education, education.”
For many years, young people in this country have been
brought up with Blair’s mantra of “education, education, education” ringing in
their ears, and one form of education in particular – university, or, more
strictly speaking, higher education – has been championed as the path to upward
social mobility and prosperity. With this view in mind, policy has been
directed towards the mass expansion of higher education (HE) – its ‘massification’
as some term it – with Labour having set the arbitrary goal of by 2010
persuading 50% of young people to study towards and achieve a degree. Initial
movement towards this target proved to be more sluggish than the Blair
administration had intended, leading to a rescoping of the 50% target so that
it was broadened to apply to any “higher education qualification” which could
encompass sub-degree qualifications such as the misnamed foundation degrees
(i.e. a vocationally-focused qualification equating to the first two years of
degree study), HE diplomas and certificates.
As time progressed, the constant repetition of the message
that HE would lead to higher lifetime earnings, a better lifestyle and social
mobility, was taken up by much of the mass media as well as schools, colleges
and universities. This was accompanied by a rush away from manufacturing and
the traditional extractive industries in the deluded belief that the key to
wealth generation lay primarily with a vastly expanded service sector, and the
UK’s participation in what the
Leitch Report termed the
‘global knowledge
economy.’
Children, knowing no better, came to internalise this
message, and many academics, who have no such excuse, did so too. Yet, what
underpinned this policy? What solid data was there to justify this claim that
obtaining a degree, or an “HE qualification”, led to greatly improved earnings
and life chances? What does the data suggest with respect to graduates who have
come through the system in recent years? How do their prospects fare with
respect to those of earlier generations? What, if anything, has this policy
achieved?
Academic inflation and the debased currency of a degree
Many recent graduates will of course be able to provide a
personal answer to a number of these questions, but what is striking about the
whole thrust of this policy, often badged as
“widening participation”, is the
manner in which it has debased the currency of a degree. This debasement has
taken two forms: firstly, the rapid expansion in the number of graduates has
lessened the market value of a degree owing to their oversupply; secondly, the
academic content of many degrees has been downgraded to cope with the
inadequacies of the contemporary schooling system, which has left a certain
proportion of the current undergraduate body with inadequate skills. The
marketisation of HE is likely to exacerbate these trends still further.
For the past couple of decades, we have witnessed the annual
headlines relating the latest year-on-year increase in the grades of GCSEs and
A Levels, and yet those with direct experience of working in the university
sector have not noted an increase in the calibre of the student intake. One of
the reasons for this trend is of course the modularisation of A Levels, the
ability to retake the said modules on several occasions, and the gearing of
teaching towards passing the test, rather than towards the development of
critical engagement with, and internalisation of, the subject matter of A
Levels.
Michael Gove has however announced that he intends to tackle these
problems, with a move back towards a more rigorous approach based upon
examinations rather than coursework, and a limited opportunity to resit.
We need more mathematicians: the sums don't add up!
Despite the fact that it was recently reported by the CBI
that
only one in five jobs in the UK are said to require graduate-level skills,
the
Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) issued a report earlier this month calling for increased government investment in the university sector, claiming
that this was necessitated by the UK sliding down the international league in
the production of graduates, whilst China and India are investing heavily in
increasing the supply. It highlights the particular need for STEM (science,
technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates, singling out mechanical
engineering in particular. However, other evidence suggests that a significant
proportion of graduates in these disciplines are unable to find employment in a
sphere related to their subject, so what is being claimed appears to diverge
from reality. Why should this be so? If it is the case, as the UCU claims, that
employers are reporting a shortage of STEM graduates, should not more effort be
put into helping match graduates with appropriate employment opportunities near
the end of their studies, rather than simply increasing the number of
graduates? If STEM graduates find themselves underemployed upon graduation,
this is neither good for them as individuals, nor for employers nor for society
at large; it represents a shocking waste of potential, as well as of time and
money.
Another debatable claim contained in the UCU report, was
that state investment in higher education should be increased because it is
highly cost effective: whereas it claims that it costs the state an average of
£18,800 to educate a graduate, the return in increased earnings over a lifetime
is said to be £180,000. If this were true, the Government would provide higher
education for free, but, as should be evident, it plainly is not the case. Even
grander claims were being made about the increased earning potential conferred
by graduate status in the early 2000s, with one figure widely bandied around
from 2001 onwards
claiming that graduates earn circa £400,000 more than non-graduates over a working lifetime. This eye-watering figure was employed to
bolster the Blair administration’s Aimhigher initiative which was launched in
2004, but this statistic was, unsurprisingly, arrived at through rather dubious
means, based as it was upon the highly selective interpretation of data
relating to a cohort of graduates born in the early 1950s. Needless to say, the
prospects that faced such graduates, who then comprised but a tiny fraction of
the population, differed considerably from the massive numbers (and proportion)
of graduates coming out of the system today. Our economy has also been
eviscerated in the intervening period, with job insecurity becoming the norm
and lifetime career structures and their earning potential destroyed by the
opening up of the economy to full-blooded globalisation.
Raising the bar, destroying the premium: the betrayal of the Blair generation
One of the stated objectives of the last Labour Government’s
mass expansion of higher education was the promotion of social mobility, the
opening up of opportunities for young people with no familial experience of
university education. It was thus touted as a route into the professions and,
more generally, to prosperity. However, as has already been alluded to in the
reference to the low percentage of job roles requiring graduate-level skills,
this approach was at best wrongheaded, and at worst, immoral. Rather than
serving as a means of social advancement, the acquisition of a degree has often
led to young people from these backgrounds entering the same types of roles
that they would have done had they left school following the completion of A
Levels or GCSEs, with the same types of salaries. An oversupply of graduates
has led to a lessening of the wage premium offered by employers, with many
roles and occupations that were once open to individuals with a handful of
decent O Level passes, now demanding a degree. Likewise, graduate professions
have raised the bar, now often demanding Masters or Doctorates, resulting in
more debt for the student, more years spent out of the labour market, and a
lower return on their investment. Academic inflation has run rampant, greatly
devaluing the currency of a degree, the cost of which has simultaneously
increased significantly.
What then, is higher education for? For anyone who would
wish to study because they are motivated by the love of their given subject, I
would say take the opportunity, but do not expect it to provide you with a
route to a better life and higher earnings, because very often it will not.
Special interest groups, distortion and the need for clarity and reform
It seems clear that one of the primary motivations
underlying the UCU report is the understandable desire of UCU members to
protect their livelihoods. Owing to the rapid expansion of the university
sector, higher education institutions are now big employers playing significant
roles in the economies of the towns and cities in which they are located. Any
downsizing in the sector could thus have a notable negative impact upon some
local economies. For the past three years, pay in universities has effectively
been frozen (with the egregious exception of university vice-chancellors, a
number of whom earn well in excess the salary of the Prime Minister), staff
numbers have been cut and the radical overhaul in the tuition fees system has
led to a great deal of uncertainty with respect to the viability of some
institutions in their current form. It is understandable therefore, that this
report should seek to forward the claim that an increase in funding for higher
education should be made a national priority, but it is precisely for these
reasons that the conclusions it draws should be treated with a healthy degree
of scepticism, given their tendentious nature.
Should higher education be for the benefit of students, the
country and the economy, or for that of vested interests within the university
sector? Unpalatable as it may be, it would seem that our higher education
sector suffers from overcapacity, and that rather than seeking to increase
absolute numbers of graduates and the proportion of young people gaining
degrees, we should instead be looking to redeploy staff in higher education
elsewhere in the economy. The big question of course, is where? Young people
should be given better opportunities in FE colleges, learning useful skills
that will make them marketable and afford them a decent living. The one thing
that does seem rational in the UCU report, is its emphasis upon protecting STEM
subjects. To secure a meaningful economic recovery we need to harness the full
potential of our graduates in these disciplines through promoting a hi-tech
research and manufacturing based economy. We need to create jobs that generate
new wealth, not jobs in the service sector that are parasitic upon the
recycling of existing capital, or borrowing it from the international money
markets.
Higher education in this country needs to be reprofiled and
retooled. Young people must be provided with the most objective information
available with respect to the likely implications of studying a certain degree;
the doors that it will open, and those that it will not, together with genuine
information relating to salary expectations and career progression. Contrary to
offering a leg-up to children from working-class backgrounds, the policies of
the last Labour Government and its successor have spun them an unrealistic yarn
and led to everyone running faster to effectively stand still. This, coupled
with Labour’s (and the Condem’s) vigorous pursuit of globalisation, leading to
increased job insecurity and downward pressure on wages, has constituted a
betrayal of the Blair generation.
Whether £27,000 of debt for tuition fees, coupled with
many thousands more for living expenses incurred whilst studying, and the
thousands potentially lost through not working during this period are adjudged
to be worthwhile in obtaining a degree, must be left to the individual, but the
decisions that they take should be based upon objective information and
evidence, not upon the self-serving data supplied by the higher education
sector itself, or by government. Cynics might say that getting students to pay
for a degree is a cost-effective means of removing them from the unemployment
statistics for three to five years whilst simultaneously making them pay for
the privilege.
