While posterity might put most of the blame for the University tuition fees fiasco – further indebtedness of graduates in conjunction with more expected debt defaults – at the recently departed Science and Universities Minister, David Willetts’ feet, in truth, in raising tuition fees (and student loan interest rates) was really just trying to find ways to pay for the ill thought-out over-expansion of higher education of previous administrations.
Over the past twenty years, successive governments, both Conservative and Labour, have been set on the expansion of higher education – specifically the number of students studying to degree level – as they noted that more successful western economies had a larger number of graduates in their workforce. A secondary consideration driving this expansion was to keep youth unemployment down by sending them into higher education.
Grand Confidence Trick
In a sort of grand confidence trick under the guise of increasing opportunity, UK governments past and present encouraged teenagers to go to university – and get into debt by doing so. They did this by promising a good job and career at the end of it (as used to be the case for graduates). While this expansion did make amends for the elitism and private school over-representation in University education-past, which also helped raise both female and lower socio-economic class participation in tertiary education, there were major problems.
As it became easier to get into university with so many university places on offer, the standard of entrants fell. To compound this, there was also “grade inflation” in universities which let degree-class pass marks slip as each institution competed with each other. The result was that the standard of graduates produced inevitably dropped making them less attractive to employ.
As it was, with more and more university graduates being produced, it was soon found that were simply not enough “graduate-class” jobs to go round. As a result many graduates found themselves in less well paid roles which really did not need a degree at all. In effect, the law of supply and demand meant that the status of being a university graduate with a “good degree” was devalued and graduates had to accept that they were no longer regarded as the “elite” anymore.
This became most evident in the salaries offered to graduates even in proper graduate-entry schemes, which have, for the most part, remained stagnant for several years. These lower salaries had the knock-on effect on the UK government and those unfortunate pension funds and finance houses it managed to sell part of the debt onto in securitised form. They subsequently became less likely to recover all the graduate debt.
The country needs more graduates – but only in the right subjects
In some ways worse that the noted over-expansion of higher education was that more and more arts graduates were being churned out of universities rather than those in the so called STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – the ones that commerce and industry (especially the Aerospace industry) really needed and was short of. The country does still need arts graduates i.e. historians, linguists, archaeologists, and yes, even media studies graduates, just not so many of them.
When this writer previously suggested to David Willetts that students should be encouraged to take these subjects – possibly using financial inducements – Willetts said that he was determined to make sure that students should be able to study what they were enthused by, rather than what others (parents, teachers, industries, governments) thought they should do. Fair enough. Nevertheless, there are increasing signs that student’s careers are damaged via poor advice given to them, as they select “fun and easy” subjects rather than those more numerate subjects which have better prospects.
As it is, it is now accepted by experts that many university students would have been better to learn “on the job” under vocational apprenticeships, rather than be studying for “useless” degrees.
To make amends the government, possibly in conjunction with industry, should encourage more take up of the “harder but more valuable” subjects by providing scholarships and bursaries to the brightest students studying the STEM subjects at University level.
Ideally the payments would made contingent on undergraduate results during the course of study, rather than “up front” at the point of entry. This would help state school entrants who, while less successful than private school candidates at getting into the best universities, they tend to do better once there.
At the same time, many school leavers should be encouraged to take apprenticeships ahead of university education, making sure that there is always a route for more academic apprentices to go on to university at a later date should they so wish.
Bursaries for Master’s courses in Engineering are already here
It is interesting to note that at Masters level at least such bursaries are now becoming available. This writer’s alma mater, Cranfield University, is now offering tuition funding to UK/EC students via the Aerospace MSc Bursary Scheme which is jointly funded by the UK Government and 12 sponsoring UK aerospace industry partners including:
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
- Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland
- Aerospace Growth Partnership
- BAE Systems
- Bombardier Aerospace Belfast
- EADS/Airbus
- Finmeccanica UK
- GKN
- MBDA Missile Systems
- Messier-Bugatti-Dowty (a Safran group company)
- Rolls Royce
- Spirit Aerosystems (Europe)
Presumably, the scheme was set up because further adding to student debt would put UK students off studying beyond first degree level. Either way, it has worked for the Masters of Science course in Astronautics and Space Engineering at Cranfield University where UK postgraduate participation has reportedly increased significantly.
Note: The author of this piece was privately educated before studying for three degrees at two universities including Cranfield. He gratefully received funding via state and research grants for his tuition fees of two of these degrees, and latterly for his final degree, had his fees indirectly paid for by his generous parents. By the way, your correspondent chose the subject of astronautics and space engineering because he wanted to study it and hoped for a space-related career. It was a good choice because it eventually got him a job.
Update on 14 August 2014: Since initially writing the early drafts of this piece, educational experts have also criticised the government and educators for encouraging youngsters to take “meaningless” degrees which do not add to their employment prospects. Instead they suggest that many considering university should plump for vocational apprenticeships instead.
