Thank you for the invitation. I am grateful to the APPG for Universities for its interest in our Higher Education Green Paper. We are now consulting on the proposals, and I hope to use the time available this evening to outline our aims.
Context for the Green Paper
The future of higher education, and the experience students get from it, matter to all of us in parliament. Our universities are in many ways a great national success story – which country in the world does not envy us our four universities in the top 10, or 38 in the top 100? Our universities are great engines of social mobility and drivers of productivity for our economy, but in both respects also some way off from fulfilling their potential.
Too few people from disadvantaged backgrounds go to university and far too many of those that do fail to progress well once they are there and once they leave. If you’re a white working class British boy, you’re 5 times less likely to go to university than if you’re from the richest 20 per cent. We can do so much better than this as a society and that’s why we’ve set out the ambitious goal in the green paper of doubling participation of the most disadvantaged by 2020.
We can also do better in ensuring that our universities are strong drivers of productivity in our economy. Employers use qualifications as a signal of productivity. They are rightly concerned when degrees aren’t matched by the better skills and productivity they’d expect. OECD research suggests that we have a greater proportion of graduates emerging from university with weak basic skills than we have thus far acknowledged. Indeed graduates from our universities are twice as likely to have weak basic skills as the OECD average – and have not benefited from their investment as we all would want.
For these graduates, the returns to university qualifications are modest, with many not earning enough to reimburse their study loans. They are part of a bigger picture, which is that between 20% (HESA) and almost 60% (CIPD) of graduates aren’t in graduate jobs.The average earnings premium – a crude proxy for the value add of university in terms of enhanced productivity - is declining. It is negligible, non-existent or even negative for significant numbers of graduates towards the bottom end of the earnings distribution.
Of course, university is not just about graduate earnings, but I think we can all agree that this is a troubling phenomenon. It explains perhaps why HEPI surveys show that in excess of a third of students don’t think they get value for money from their university experience. Now, we want all young people to have the opportunity to benefit from a university education, which is why we’ve lifted the cap on student numbers. But we want them to be fully informed when they make that decision to go to university, rather than to embark on an apprenticeship or other more vocational path.
This means the sector must be more transparent. As the Competition and Markets Authority guidelines require, universities must make clear to prospective students:
- the course content and structure
- how courses will be delivered
- what the balance will be between the various elements, such as the number and type of contact hours that students can expect (for example, lectures, seminars, work placements, feedback on assignments), the expected workload of students (for example the expected self-study time).
- as well as details about the general level of
- experience or status of the staff involved in delivering the different elements of the course.
And then when they get there, we want them to have a first-class teaching experience that prepares them for graduate employment or further study. This is just as important for the taxpayers underwriting the loan system. We want graduates, from all backgrounds, able to secure fulfilling jobs and contribute to society. Our green paper therefore sets out a plan for a higher education system built around the student – one which:
- Does better at widening participation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds
- Opens up the sector to greater competition and innovation, driving up quality and choice
- Delivers better value for money for students and taxpayers
- Drives productivity in our economy by raising the quality of the graduate skills pipeline
...to continue reading please open the PDF below.