Focus on local research and skills, says Tory manifesto author

The role of English universities in the Westminster government’s levelling-up agenda should encompass “reorienting” their skills training and research towards local economies, by shifting academic career incentives away from “obscure parts of the globe”, plus innovation that leads to higher wages, according to a co-author of the last Conservative manifesto.

Rachel Wolf made the comments at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on 4 October, where Sheffield Hallam University vice-chancellor Sir Chris Husbands also accepted that there was a “legitimate case” for introducing minimum entry requirements at universities, while stressing the importance of mass higher education to advanced economies.

Facing a difficult comprehensive spending review and frequent criticism from ministers on economic and cultural grounds, some in policymaking and in universities see emphasising their civic roles in local and regional economies as a way to assert a more positive role.

Ms Wolf, a founding partner of the influential political consultancy Public First, who co-wrote the 2019 Tory manifesto, said: “My question is now…[is] what is the role of universities in levelling-up, if you see the concept of levelling-up as about restoring civic pride and allowing people to feel there is opportunity in the place they live.”

On the first element, local skills and training, in focus groups run by Public First, “mid-level skills” and technical training are “very important to the people we talk to in places that need levelling-up”, she told the event, hosted by the Education Policy Institute and Sheffield Hallam.

She continued: “My challenge to universities is to really be first movers in showing how this can be delivered…Universities can be a vanguard in this, not only in [offering] sub-degree [qualifications] but in returning to things like evening training for workers and lifelong learning. But we haven’t seen…a lot of first movement yet.”

The second element of universities’ role in levelling-up “links to devolution”, said Ms Wolf.

“I have become convinced that, long term, you cannot do levelling-up seriously without local power and local decision-making. I think it’s impossible.”

She continued: “It seems to be [that academics] often feel they will have a greater career route by publishing research on obscure parts of the globe and how to improve their productivity, rather than actually working deeply with the local leadership and local area about how to improve the economics of their place. That would be a signal that we were reorienting not only skills training but R&D towards what is most likely to make the biggest long-term difference to these areas.”

The third element, said Ms Wolf, was on jobs. In Public First focus groups, members of the public asked about their levelling-up priorities first talk about the condition of their high streets, then after that “fundamentally it is about opportunities and it is about jobs, it is about security for families”, she said. “That means we need to be moving towards higher wage, higher stability equilibria in these places.

“We have an opportunity to do that because there are a limited number of technologies and areas where the government is going to spend a lot of money – net zero being the most obvious example.”

But, Ms Wolf, added: “I still see quite a big gap, though, between the nature of that government policy as it emerges and the extent to which universities are articulating and being funded to develop really tangible technological innovations.” She cited the example of the UK having leading climate scientists but with few of them, as she saw it, working on technological solutions to mitigate climate change.

“Universities are intrinsic to places,” said Ms Wolf, and more could be done in government and in universities “to demonstrate how living somewhere doesn’t need to be a limit on opportunity and future”.

With the government expected to unveil at the spending review a plan for a minimum entry requirement to qualify for student loans, using GCSE grades, Sir Chris said “there is a case, a legitimate case, for minimum entry thresholds”, “which would in turn help to generate a more balanced school system”.

“But we all need to realise we live in a world of increasingly massified higher education,” he added. Higher education participation rates ranged from 40 per cent in the UK, to 47 per cent in China, 54 per cent in the US and 75 per cent in South Korea, he said.

“The importance of massified higher education in advanced economies should not be understated,” continued Sir Chris.

There are “some difficult choices coming – choices about funding, choices about participation, choices about who goes” to university, he also said. “It’s a good precept for politicians: get ahead of the issues.”

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com