Only about 20 per cent of school-leavers need to go to university

All UK political parties have consistently trumpeted vigorous support of education; remember Tony Blair’s claim that his “top priority was, is and always will be education, education, education”.

With such solid political support, one might expect education to change only for the better. Having recently retired as a university teacher, however, my perception is that the opposite has happened.

I submit that several related policies have had unforeseen and corrosive consequences on higher education. Chief among these are the post-1992 expansion of the university system, the introduction of tuition fees, the narrowing of the educational offering and the embrace of market-oriented management tools.

On the surface, all this makes sense. What could be the problem with increasing the opportunity to attend university, or having the cost of tuition borne by those who stand to benefit, or listing the abilities a particular degree course will deliver or, indeed, designing performance metrics and using league tables of them to drive improvement?

But with higher education expansion came the devaluing and dismantling of the parallel system of education/training in polytechnics and technical colleges. It wasn’t just that this changed the focus of the educational experience at former polytechnics from the practical to the academic. It also narrowed the door to certain professions. When a university degree acquires a certain value in society, all the professions that are able to develop a degree-level training approach and require this either for professional recognition or favour it in job adverts and promotions.

But does society require half the population to be educated to degree level? Nurses, for instance, once trained on the job. Now they need a degree for a job that can be highly technical but is still at its core a practical one that relies hugely on interpersonal skills and teamwork. The fact is that the majority of careers in the UK do not demand the skills of critical analysis, judgement and exposition that are the hallmarks of a higher education. And, arguably, the requirements of degree training keep out many people who would be very effective in roles such as nursing.

A more insidious unintended consequence of expansion is the judgement felt by some school-leavers who choose not to go to university. When the depth and breadth of technical education was greater, attending a technical college was seen as a valid choice. Such training was trusted to develop valuable skills, abilities and attitudes, and led to careers with good and well-understood prospects. I grew up in a heavily industrialised part of the north-west and I know this is true. Now, however, those who do not go to university are assumed (by those outside education, at least) to be intellectually inferior, narrowing their route to a gainful career.

Regarding tuition fees, I confess that I’ve changed my view. Initially, I supported them. I hoped fees would encourage a greater level of student engagement with the intellectual challenge of higher education. University should be a great experience, but it should require application, thought and discussion; activities that I believed could stand some reinvigoration. Instead, a consumerist attitude gradually arose, whereby students became increasingly unwilling to be challenged.

The narrowing of the educational experience and the introduction of metrics and other management tools both emerged from the combination of market-oriented management practices and the obsession with learning outcomes in degree syllabuses. Academics who claimed a research focus were especially pressed to measure up in the various assessments of research productivity, as well as contributing to teaching and endless administration. Students, accustomed to highly specified school syllabuses, happily accepted a more prescriptive scheme that linked activity with assessment in university.

In the past decade, I’ve had students tell me they didn’t own or borrow any books, didn’t know how to find the library, and never discussed what they were reading and thinking with other students. In one conversation, I was stunned to silence by a student who told me, quite angrily, that they were at university to get a degree, not an education.

In all this, I now see that we (staff) have been at fault. In pursuit of student satisfaction, we have enabled students to believe that there is nothing about “graduate skills” that can’t be acquired by maintaining the approaches to learning that brought them success in secondary education.

Is there a fix? Yes, but it is not likely to be politically welcome. We should reduce the proportion of school-leavers who embark on higher education to about 20 per cent, abolish tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. At the same time, we should revitalise technical education, including industry-led apprenticeships. I know there is already a push to revive apprenticeships but not at the scale or quality needed. Recent figures indicate that nearly half of apprentices in England fail to complete their courses.

As for management, staff and students should be enabled and encouraged to spend more time in each other’s company. This is the only way to establish the bond of trust and mutual respect that is necessary if students are to risk exploring the boundaries of knowledge and engaging in challenging discussion.

Above all, we must reflect on what a university education is for. I was trained to write the question of an essay at the top of each new sheet of paper so that I was constantly reminded of it. I don’t think we’ve done a good job of keeping the purpose of education (higher or otherwise) in mind. Mundane things like revenue have been much more in focus.

I’d give us a B for effort, but an F for attainment.

Philip Langton recent retired as senior lecturer in physiology at the University of Bristol.