The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has just published a report saying the way to combat recession is to up the number of university places. I disagree.
The problem is that while we have a culture where there’s a course for everyone, we have a degree for everyone – smart or stupid, talented or talentless. This has led to a system where only two grades matter – First or Fail. A First sets you out from the majority of candidates for employment, who leave with 2:1s, 2:2s or thirds; a fail means you’re back to square one. Anything in between is simply a blur of the average, and companies have no desire for the average.
But surely a degree should mean something? A degree should mean that someone is clever, whatever the grade. However, with degrees filled up with students who got EEE at A-level, it naturally devalues the system. Such has been the urgency to ensure kids get better grades at A-Level (and the subsequent drop in grade boundaries and standards) that even students with straight As at GCSE and predicted straight As at A-level are turned away without so much as an interview at Oxford or Cambridge, meaning that even the exceptional are having trouble getting noticed. And the problem of over-subscription at all levels has resulted in this year’s clearing being over within 24 hours, rather than the week or so it normally takes.
The problem is that universities aren’t lowering their standards, and they don’t offer the retakes and appeals that are entrenched in the A-level system. This means there are a lot of graduates studying for low-level degrees flooding the system, and they can’t just ask for a retake and choose the best of the two grades as they can for their A-levels.
These people are hardly unemployable, but the jobs they apply for are often extremely competitive and they end up taking jobs they are overqualified for, further widening the gap between graduates and non-graduates as graduates take up the job NEETs would normally have taken.
So what should be done? Firstly, we need to restrict the number of university places available. This will add value to degrees, enhance the job prospects for graduates, and concentrate student debt on those who will be able to pay it, rather than across a whole generation.
Secondly, we need to increase both funding and capacity along with lowering the prices of distance learning. The Open University is able to provide lifelong learning to those who want it and cost should not be a barrier. This would enable those who don’t get a university place but still want a decent degree to get it and not break the bank. Every university should offer distance learning, even if it’s as a cartel (eg, the University of London external system).
Reducing the price of the Open University will ensure that the market is competitively priced. Hand in hand with this would be allowing the same to happen with A-levels and GCSEs – those wishing to take on new subjects should be encouraged, and private candidates should be allowed to take their exams anywhere, instead of the current system which allows schools to opt-out.
What Britain should produce is a consistent crop of high-class graduates and to do that, the university system needs to be shrunk. What we have now is a celebration of the ordinary, a system which adds little to the majority and is run quite definitely for profit. And to allow that to continue cheats not only our youth, but everyone who is intoxicated with the pursuit of knowledge.
* Rich Wilson is a Liberal Democrat member in Sale.
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22 Comments
This is the same logic that opposed compulsory schooling in the C19th, raising the school leaving age to 16, and the Thatcher expansion of Higher Ed. As judged by wage rates, the argument has been consistently wrong in the past.
There are two reasons to support a rise in the number of kids going on to higher ed (permanently, not just this year). First, we live in an era of “skill biased technological change”, that is, unlike the era in which new technology meant mass-production and deskilling, all the evidence is today that new technology requires more skills, not less. As a result the private and social returns to education are rising. So more education makes us richer.
Second if we limit the number of graduates, we make them scarcer in the labour market so that firms have to compete hard to recruit them. This means higher wages for the graduates that do exist, which means greater inequality. Increasingly the number of graduates would make Britain a more equal society, since the graduate wage premium would fall in line with standard demand and supply analysis.
A richer and more equal society? Count me in!
(Anyone with a serious interest in this area might like to consult the recent book on it by Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz)
But what happens is the opposite. There are always going to be people in society without qualifications and while that amount is decreasing, the amount of jobs in existence is staying stable (in the long term). The more graduates there are, the more people will be long term unemployed so we’d be trading a short term economic benefit (because other countries will catch up) for long term social problems. The society that comes about will be the majority being on an average wage and those who aren’t as educated will be unemployed. OK, we aren’t at a stage where graduates will be flipping burgers but a labour market over-saturated with graduates is very undesirable, will lead to rapid wage inflation and, as a result, widespread inflationary tendencies as a whole.
We need to work out how many graduates the economy atually needs and set student numbers at that level. (the government already controls the exact number of funded student places in the whole country). Currently there are graduates applying for jobs that could be and used to be done by non graduates but the employers are looking for graduates now simply because they can get them due to the oversupply of graduates.
We also need to look more at what subjects are needed in the economy, we have far too many ‘arts subject’ students and no where near enough engineering students for example. Ok this might seem a bit soviet style government engineering of the job market but surely it is better we have people qualified in ares that the economy actually needs then it is to have a load of unemployed or employed in what should be non graduate jobs due to an over supply in certain subject areas.
“The problem is that universities aren’t lowering their standards,”
This is not true. Huddersfield University in my final year altered the way final grades were calculated which mean, on similar module marks, more 2:1s would be awarded than previously. This was to place their grade calculations on the same basis as their neareast comparable university Sheffield Hallam.
The problem with this debate is that too many people assume that education = university degree.
Rich Wilson is right that the degree is being devalued. The average IQ is 100 (hence the scale). I would have thought that an IQ of at least 120 is required to possess the intellectual capacity to benefit from genuine degree-level education. Clearly, expanding university education to admit 50% of school-leavers entails admitting the 100-120 cohort (probably worse in reality, since a middle class pupil with an IQ of 95 is more likely to win a university place than a working class pupil with an IQ of 125).
But Tim Leunig is also right that we live in a knowledge economy and need a better educated workforce. But does that necessarily mean a degree? What is wrong with offering a variety of education, such as apprenticeships or diplomas, to complement degrees, so that there is a range of education and training to suit people’s range of needs, intelligence and aptitude?
Peter1919’s suggestion of calculating the number of degrees required with mathematical precision isn’t practical. The development of the economy is difficult to predict with accuracy. There is in any case a six- to seven-year lead time between first planning a course and producing graduates. And then there is the problem of class. Even if we were able to predict the requirement accurately, the sharp elbows of the middle classes would ensure that thicker middle class pupils would grab places that ought more properly go to brighter working class pupils.
More importantly, I fundamentally disagree with Peter1919’s assumption that the sole function of university education is to serve the economy. The main value of university education – indeed, all education – is to develop a person’s potential and opportunities. That comes from a general ‘liberal education’ as much as anything, and in most cases the subject studied is of secondary importance. As any genuine liberal should know, education should supply what people need rather than what the economy needs. The economy is there to serve us, not the other way round.
50% in further and higher education has somehow morphed into 50% attending University and getting degrees.
Now it would be great if the 50% were all bright people who just happened to fall through the nets because they had the silly idea that people from their background just didn’t do A Levels and go to university. If the spreading the net wider picked up people who were just as bright as those who usually go, but didn’t because of social factors.
But I’m not sure that is the case.
Elitism is wrong when it’s based on what your accent is, who your parents were and whether you can do the right sort of handshake. But it is only wrong when based on factors other than the candidates own inteligence.
We need vocational education to promote skills, there should be technicians and plumbers and electricians trained to higher education levels. We need some vocational education that is different to a degree not seen as a lesser option.
I agree that Peter1919’s proposal is, unfortunately, unworkable, and still wouldn’t cure the problem of over/undersubscription to courses and that’s before you take into account fluctuations in supply and demand in the general economy. What is important is that after the reduction of full time places, there is a system in place to ensure that those who still wish to pursue a degree can do, and can do it around their career and at a reasonable price. After all, price shouldn’t be a factor in a person choosing whether to be educated or not. And, with the current system, even a reduction in university places may not result in a large rise in demand for distance learning. The markets aren’t as interlinked as one would think.
Tim
When we had this discussion previously – and you had suggested that “it is possible that the optimal proportion of the population for university is as high as 80%” – I tried to get you to back up your assertion with some evidence. In particular, I asked which of the following groups in the standard classification of occupations you thought education to degree level was necessary for:
4 Administrative and Secretarial Occupations
5 Skilled Trades Occupations
6 Personal Service Occupations
7 Sales and Customer Service Occupations
8 Process, Plant and Machine Operatives
9 Elementary Occupations
You replied by saying “Any job that employers prefer to pay a graduate higher wages to do”, but when I asked which of the above groups that was true of, you didn’t respond. May I ask the same question again?
https://www.libdemvoice.org/why-british-universities-need-student-fees-6672.html#comment-72095
Herbert – I think with 7 you raise a very good point because a significant amount of graduates now go straight into those sorts of roles. Many other roles now ask for experience, owing to the amount of new graduate applicants they get. Of course there aren’t any hard figures on this, unfortuantely, but it’s fair to say that there are a lot of graduates now (and I include myself in this) take first roles that they are totally over-qualified for solely as they need to gain experience. And, in the long run, graduate wages (over a lifetime) are going to fall as roles are taken for which they are overqualified and they aren’t able to get out of them and progress.
I do think this emphasis on a University education is truly misguided. Some of our most sucessful managers have never been to University for example Stuart Rose and Phillip Green. I think we are in danger of isolating and ignoring many talented and bright individuals because they neither have the patience with, nor interest in ‘education’. We must not close the doors to the Hierarchy simply on the basis’ of exam results. It is what individuals achieve in the work place should be what matters
Er… call me a Liberal, but wouldn’t it be better for the state to butt out and let the market decide?
Simon and others are right.
The lazy assumption that higher education = university is not just wrong, it is profoundly damaging because it shuts down thought about what alternatives ought to exist in a rounded system. The damage is not because it leaves out high fliers like Stuart Rose but because it leaves out the majority (and it’s a very substantial majority even now after years of overexpanding the universities) who aspire to trade or craft skills lack of quality training in which is a traditional weakness of the UK economy.
And of course it’s not just the economy that looses; it’s the individuals themselves. Most NEETS would be well on the way to being socially-integrated, productive citizens if there was a system that actually provided for their post-school training needs. Very unsurprisingly, it’s what the parents want.
I blogged about this at some length only last month.
http://liberaleye.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/after-school-the-black-hole-that-swallows-hope/
“Er… call me a Liberal, but wouldn’t it be better for the state to butt out and let the market decide?”
But what would that mean? Privatising the universities and cutting off public funding for higher education?
The basic problem here is, what do you do with Douglas Adams’s “B list”. It’s probably best to describe them in a supercilious, arrogant and patronising way, and never mind being called insensitive. The need is to get the pioint across. So, Simon’s “100-120 IQ cohort” is just fine.
The problem is, what the hell does society do with these guys?
Theory A is that you push degrees at them, and spoon-feed them their 2.2s and 3rds, on the premise that they will be more use to the nation if they have a high level qualification. Then most of them end up unemployed, or stuck in mindless jobs they feel demeaned by. Yes, we do have gainful employment for bright high-flying professionals in all sorts of fields, but it doesn’t extend to 50% of the population.
Theory B is that it makes more sense to get them a vocational training, in something like motor mechanics or plumbing, at which they might excel. Well, it works for some. But as a panacea, it falls far short. The truth is, of course, that our demand for skilled manual labour has fallen hugely over the last century, and it is quite limited. So yes, we may have a shortage of plumbers. It does not follow that if we trained 50% of the population in plumbing, instead of giving them a university education, that they would all make a mint of money as plumbers!
The dilemma we are arguing about so passionately is therefore, in fact, a choice between two weak alternatives. If we spend a lot of effort widening academic education to cover the B listers, the returns will be poor. But if we don’t do it, then the outcome could be worse.
Both sides of this argument would do well to recognise the weakness of their position. Maybe that would help us to think outside the box.
Is the national obsession with education for vocation and wealth generation oversold? Would we gain more from education for life, leisure, and cultural development? What makes a better nurse – three years reading a load of theory which he/she will never use on the job, or, lively outside interests that will help to keep him/her alert and smiling while busy on the ward?
“But what would that mean? Privatising the universities and cutting off public funding for higher education?”
To the extent that they are not already “privatised” – yes, with publlc funding not “cut off”, but secured and delivered via individual lifelong learning accounts – exchanged for tertiary education, vocational training, career re-skilling etc (or even traded) as individual citizens choose. Now that’s what I call freedom.
The only question then is how much the state puts into an individual’s account (and how the revenue is raised of course – but that’s another traditional Liberal story).
Andrew
Well, I do think something along those lines has a lot more merit than a blind insistence on an ever-increasing proportion of the population spending three years getting a university degree after leaving school.
But I really don’t think “the market” can provide a magic answer to the problem of academic standards, which was the subject of the original poster’s concerns. If 80% of 18-year-olds decided they wanted to spend their their lifelong learning allowances on university degrees, a pure market approach would dictate that the universities had to lower their entrance requirements drastically in order to get the money. That doesn’t sound as though it would be a very satisfactory result.
Herbert
“I really don’t think “the market” can provide a magic answer to the problem of academic standards, which was the subject of the original poster’s concerns.”
Au contraire! There is no better mechanism for raising academic standards – assuming that’s what students and their prospective employers want – than a truly competitive free market.
“If 80% of 18-year-olds decided they wanted to spend their their lifelong learning allowances on university degrees, a pure market approach would dictate that the universities had to lower their entrance requirements drastically in order to get the money. That doesn’t sound as though it would be a very satisfactory result.”
And employers of graduates from universities that devalued academic standards in such a way would soon start rejecting them, reducing the number of students applying to such institutions – and their revenue stream accordingly.
There may be a few “rogue” players in any market, out for short term gain rather than sustainable growth (caveat emptor!), but logic suggests they won’t be around for long – unless of course the market determines a need for “budget” qualifications, in which case who are we as Liberals to argue?
Andrew – “There is no better mechanism for raising academic standards – assuming that’s what students and their prospective employers want – than a truly competitive free market”
But if we want universities to be socially inclusive and to ensure that smart, poor kids get into good universities, there can never be a truly competitive free market in full-time university education. Distance learning is a different matter. In addition, truly free market universities may end up with a few universities that cover not that much of the country, leaving large swathes of the population unable to attend due to cost or practicality.
Andrew
I think your comment “who are we as Liberals to argue?” – in response to a warning that “the market” might in practice decimate academic standards – illustrates adequately where you’re coming from.
I know this is the kind of view advocated by a small but vociferous right-wing minority in the party, but – thank God – it’s not recognisable as any part of Liberalism as the party has practised it at any period in my lifetime.
Does it not occur to you that education may have a value in itself beyond whatever “the market” might require in order to maximise its profits?
Herbert,
I am sorry not to have replied last time you asked me. I don’t read this site every day.
I don’t think that the data are collected in the way that is needed to answer the question that you post. Why don’t you ring the ONS?
Clearly supporting more univ education does not mean opposing other post16 and post-18 options.
Tim
Why should 50% attend University anyway? That has always puzzled me – why not 50.5, 0r 48.2%? Who came up with this figure?
I have a 2.1 in Estate Management from a now closed Agricultural College in the South West. Sadly, jobs in rural practice chartered surveying are not the best paid (and there were continuous moans about the quality of graduates coming through – not surprising when they paid £8k a year pre APC), I was in debt so I joined the railway instead. In a totally non graduate job but daily affecting the lives of thousands of people….
Tim
“Why don’t you ring the ONS?”
Because what I was trying to get at – in response to your previous suggestion that 80% might be an optimal figure for university attendance – was your own ideas about the type of jobs for which a university degree was the best form of training.
Because – to spell it out explicitly – I think if you could bear to think about the kind of jobs that are actually done by 80% of the population (especially bearing in mind that a significant percentage of those of working age aren’t even in employment), you would find it very hard to argue that putting people through a three-year university course would be an efficient use of resources – viewed as a preparation for those jobs.
And of course, if you really are advocating another huge expansion in the number of people attending university – perhaps as much as doubling the percentage – of course that is going to drastically reduce the resources available for “other post16 and post-18 options”.
Should we not be looking at the evidence and trying to work out what would be the most beneficial use of resources, rather than just saying that more and more people should be channelled through three-year university degree courses?