Degree courses at further education colleges will drive UK levelling up

In 1969, The Open University was established to provide higher education on a scale never thought possible before technology enabled learning at a distance. At first the technology was the postal service and television. Today, it is the internet.

Since then, the OU has received wide political backing because of its powerful mission: to be a driver of equality of opportunity and social mobility.

Today, more than 2.2 million learners later, the UK government is funding and supporting the OU to address a specific new challenge: levelling up England’s most disadvantaged areas.

Further education colleges are economic anchors for every town and city in the country, able to reach every community – including in the most disadvantaged areas. These areas are often stuck in a vicious circle of weak industry demand for the skills needed to drive forward the country’s prosperity and an undersupply of people with those skills to attract businesses and help them grow. Many colleges do work in partnerships with universities but there is a big opportunity to do much more to support colleges in enabling people to stay local, both to train and to work.

This step change is vital if we are to level up skills with qualifications that employers want, often focused on an occupational need for a one- or two-year course rather than a general degree over three or four years.

With the government’s new Lifelong Loan Entitlement being introduced in England from 2025, there will also be the funding to return to study later in working life and upskill with short courses. Higher education will no longer be once-and-for-all but a lifelong opportunity.

We need to support our colleges not as a second-best option for those unable to go to university but increasingly as a first choice: a realistic and respected alternative. The government will do that by providing the funding for colleges to deliver their own higher education provision, with the OU there to support them with quality assurance, course content and credit transfer, as well as providing young people with the assurance of receiving a qualification from an institution with international recognition and prestige.

From the outset, the OU was always intended to provide advanced technical education, working collaboratively with a national network of colleges. Although it has developed as a fully-fledged teaching and research university, we now see an opportunity for the government, colleges and the OU to work together to make that plan a reality.

Working with the OU and the Office for Students, the government is offering a new package of support to assist colleges with expanding their post-18 offer more quickly than would otherwise be possible, investing an initial £10 million in the most disadvantaged areas. The intention is to learn from what works in these areas and then scale up.

This will be a new type of higher education, focused on advanced skills for local needs, shorter courses, credit transfer and blended face-to-face and online learning, with colleges at the heart of their local economies. It will help transform individuals and communities, opening doors that would otherwise be closed and contributing to levelling up opportunity across the country.

Nadhim Zahawi is England’s secretary of state for education. Tim Blackman is vice-chancellor of The Open University. David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges.