Wolf: university ‘supply’ key to lifelong learning entitlement

England’s lifelong learning entitlement went through “against [the] Treasury”, while a key question in its implementation will be whether universities are incentivised to offer short courses in sufficient numbers, according to its architect after her spell in No 10 developing the scheme.

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich was a panel member on the Augar review of post-18 education that recommended the creation of a lifelong learning loan allowance, before, in February 2020, then prime minister Boris Johnson appointed her his part-time adviser on skills and workforce in the No 10 Policy Unit to develop the lifelong learning entitlement (LLE), a role that finished earlier this year.

The LLE, scheduled for introduction in 2025, will provide students with access to up to four years’ worth of loan funding on a flexible basis, so learners can take individual modules or short courses throughout their working lives if they choose.

Asked about her experience working in government, Lady Wolf, who is Sir Roy Griffiths professor of public sector management at King’s College London, told Times Higher Education: “I’m actually quite satisfied, even though there are huge numbers of things that could have gone faster. The fact that higher education was such a political issue…it slowed everything down.”

Were there particular battles in government on the LLE? “Treasury was worried that it would just mean more and more money…That was the other lesson I learned – that you can get a policy through if No 10 is fully behind it against [the] Treasury,” she replied.

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Some vice-chancellors, while welcoming the LLE generally, have warned that retaining a fees and loans-based system will mean the scheme does not appeal to debt-averse older students, repeating the mistakes of the trebling of fees in 2012, which led to a collapse in part-time student numbers.

“I don’t know how much demand there will be,” Lady Wolf acknowledged. But she added: “The whole world is convinced on general lines that it makes no sense whatsoever for all our [post-18] education and training to be compressed into the years between 18 and 21.”

While the LLE “won’t do it entirely on its own”, she continued, the “answer is not that it [the LLE] is a mistake and we’re just absolutely fine and let’s just send even more of our 18-year-olds into four-year degrees with a foundation year.

“The answer is that once we’ve seen how far it goes within the structure, if there are obstacles then we need to do something about it.”

A key issue in the LLE will be “supply” of courses and “incentives for supply”, she also said.

She added: “If you’re a university vice-chancellor, which would you rather have: an 18-year-old who signs up for four full-time years, or three or four people who are adults who come in for one year each?…The real question is whether enough people will be interested in the one-year options for universities – because they are in competition [with each other] – to provide those options.”

Although the LLE is “in its current state probably not sufficient” on its own, it is an “absolutely necessary precondition for turning the tide on part-time and mature study”, Lady Wolf argued. She added: “Even if you only believe half the hype around AI, it feels like we might need to do quite a lot of reskilling, relearning and retraining in the decades ahead.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com