Student funding

A good old-fashioned riot in London the other day. I remember the Poll Tax riots of the 1990s and this one was pretty small by comparision. The poll tax riots were the sharp end of a wider dissatisfaction throughout society; whereas yesterday's riots, frankly, were not.


You have to look much more widely at the whole direction of British educational policy in the last 20 years to put the 'student debt' crisis into perspective. You can't look at the problematic issue of student funding in isolation.

It's said that dustmen have to fund the degrees of doctors because they might need them sometime. They might; but doctors earn such high salaries (GPs up to £100k) that there's no reason such future high earners shouldn't at least partly fund their own education, restrospectively. A family member of mine, a nurse, often asks why she should fund economics degrees when people with 2:1s in Economics will earn a lot more than her. So the Government's principle is sound: if you earn more than a non-graduate, pay back the cost of your degree, but only when you earn enough (over £21k now, it used to £16k when I gradutated in 1995) and then only in small increments, over a long period of time. Perfectly reasonable.

No-one seems to mind taking on £150k of debt to buy a house; it's seen as an investment. In continental Europe people tend to rent more; this means that property ownership is not as common as it is here, but they don't have so much debt. University education should be an investment in your future - so why not take on some debt, especially as the repayment terms are so much better than mortgages? Can you imagine a mortgage where you don't have to pay each month if you don't earn enough? It's all debt, but it depends on your attitude to education - is it an investment, or just a cost?



Students (and their parents, I suspect) are up in arms over the levels of debt they will be saddled with - up to £9k per year of degree, plus up to £8k living expenses per year. So they could be looking at £50k of debt. If the average graduate earns £100k more in their lifetime than a non-graduate then this is still reasonable. The problem is, as the Daily Mail pointed out in a well-researched article, is that they also have to pay back the interest on the debt. You see, when I graduated the loans were interest-free; now they're linked to inflation. That means that for an average graduate, total repayments could be nudging £90k. Suddenly that Economics degree is not looking quite as good.

So although I think students who oppose the principle of self-funding are arrogant and deluded, I can see the objection to its practical implementation. The problem, and the solution, lies in British attitudes to education.

Back in the 1990s the (then) British government deluded itself into thinking that because the US and other countries had 60% or so of 18 year-olds entering universities, we had to do the same. What they didn't understand was that in the US, the definition of 'university' is very broad indeed. The Government also didn't see why there should be a distinction between different types of degrees or institutions, so they renamed the old Polytechnics as "universities" - so that instantly the higher education participation figures looked better. Well, I think that education never stops. You NEVER stop learning, whatever you do in life. The catastrophic error was to think that full-time, 3-year-long Bachelors degrees at universities away from students' homes was the way virtually everyone should go. Why should this be so?

Everyone's heard of "Mickey Mouse" degrees. Degrees of dubious academic merit. Equine Studies, anyone? If fees deter people from allowing such rubbish to be funded as a degree it's only a good thing.

So here are some solutions. The UK Government (ie taxpayers) can't and shouldn't fund all degrees, for any subject, no matter how wealthy the backgrounds of students. That's the basic problem that students, and the NUS, can't accept. Well, they're going to have to. It's unjust and impractical. No wonder no-one takes the NUS seriously any more. They don't have a serious alternative. I don't know any OECD country that goes that far (except Scotland, and their money comes from English taxpayers. Time to repatriate our taxes, perhaps?)

So first, keep Lord Browne's principle that universities should charge what they like. The Government has watered it down to a cap of £9k a year. This doesn't make sense. No-one - not the government, not you, not me, not the Queen of England - can tell whether the price paid by students for a specific degree is 'worth it'. The only thing that will tell you is the market. If there are not enough well-paid jobs available to holders of a specific degree, applicants will dry up and therefore fees will fall. Students are intelligent and therefore have to make an informed decision. Putting artificial caps, or setting fee levels by diktat distorts this and will therefore make the problems of unemployed, or under-employed graduates, worse.

For poor students, the fees can fund bursaries. So they will probably benefit the most. The idea that high fees will entrench privilege and slow social mobility is therefore false.  The rich will have to pay their own way.

What about the 'squeezed middle'? Here is where attitudes to education come into play. There is an idea that by making everyone the same, everyone will beneift. It's called socialism, folks. So: if everyone goes to university,  and there is no distinction between old Polys and established universities, everyone gets the same outcome in life. Right? Er, no: wrong.

Abolishing so many grammar schools didn't help. It makes it more difficult for bright kids from poor backgrounds to reach their potential. They were abolished for ideological reasons, for social engineering. Could there be anything more contemptible than using children as a vehicle for this? Bring back the grammar schools, and put them in poor areas, not wealthy ones. The wealthy always manage ok.

Another pernicious effect of trying to engineer equality was the dumbing-down of A Levels (and GCSEs). The grades have risen relentlessly since 1989, but universities complain that the standard of maths freshers (for example) is actually declining. Industry and the CBI say the same. The A* grade has been introduced in a desperate attempt to restore credibility to this discredited exam system but more and more schools are going for the International Baccalaureate, as it is seen as apolitical, with more impartial marking. GCSEs in particular are now rigged in the sense that they have retakes, or modular exams, excessive coursework, a lowering of grade boundaries and a more lenient marking system that awards marks for effort and gives explicit guidance on how to approach questions (for maths in particular). Different exam boards, absurdly, compete with each other. So the systems need to be combined into a single exam board, all political interference removed, all modular and coursework parts reviewed, the syllabi toughened the grade boundaries restored to pre-1989 levels. If this can't be done, the whole country should drop them move to the "Bac".You don't improve kids' education by tinkering with the marking and making things easier for them in the exam hall.

The grade entries for universities have to have their rigour restored. Two "E" grades won't cut it. Three good A Level grades are what is needed.  As a minimum.

Mickey Mouse degrees need to be abolished. Universities are for academic subjects only. Polys need their fomer status restored, as centres for more vocational courses, or short courses, only.

What about funding? Here are some simple solutions. Why do a full-time degree at all? Is it needed in every case? There's no reason not to do a degree part-time, while holding down a job. Possibly encourage students to study in their home town, if the course was right. This is common in Germany, for example. So some students could do a 5 or 6 year part-time degree instead of 3 years full-time. The job should, ideally, be a training ground for the students' chosen careers. If employers know they will get a graduate with a degree that is relevant and useful to them, who also has relevant work experience, they will have far more incentive to fund them with a bursary, for example. I believe that we have to get employers involved in funding higher education because they're the ones who ultimately benefit (or suffer). If they can be persuaded to contribute to the cost of degrees it would help the situation. But they need to be convinced that the subjects studied are helpful to them.

What about non-academic, or vocational courses? Degrees in media studies, travel and tourism etc. Perhaps I was a little harsh on the Equine Studies degree earlier. It's probably useful if you're into horses. (If you know what I mean.) So the government needs to massively increase apprenticeships and on-the-job learning schemes as an alternative to degrees of dubious value. Give employers tax breaks if necessary to encourage them. Apprenticeships are a big feature of 18+ education in other European countries like Germany. Degrees should be the preserve of the academically most talented, regardless of their parents' income or their socio-econmic background. Since everyone needs training we could have 100% of 19-22 year olds completing some kind education - since you need training of some sort for just about any job. There seem to be a plethora of qualifications out there - NVQs being common. Just don't pretend that everyone has to go to university. This would take the strain off universities funding every subject.


But here's the thing - education is of value in itself, even if the market doesn't support the course through adequate job opportunities. I was only talking about highly expensive 3 year full-time courses, where the market can determine fees. Why not give everyone at 18 a small grant and they can decide what to do with it: put towards a degree, put towards an apprenticeship through their employer, do multiple part-time NVQs, or save it for a degree later when students are more certain about their career choice. No need to insist that you have to do a degree at 18 if you want to be eligible for a student loan. 

If the protestors have a point, it's that the loans as they stand could be more generous. Why make graduates pay back the interest as well? Abolishing interest payments would make the pill slightly less bitter.

When I graduated I had £3k of student loan to pay back. Small beer by today's standards, but I was also unable to get a job paying more than £16k for almost 3 years. It's a problem a lot of graduates may have. This can be partly addressed by adopting my suggestion of restricting Bachelors degrees to the most highly qualified A Level students, and only offering degrees in subjects that are 'traditional', rigorous subjects.

So there are some practical, and fair, solutions. I'm not saying there are too many students (although there certainly appears to be) but that if degrees don't pay you back in increased earnings then a state funded system is not sustainable. I had to laugh at the loathsome Harriet Harman talking in the Commons as if she had nothing to do with the situation. Labour introduced top-up fees. They expanded university education without thinking it through, continued the debasement of A Levels and GCSEs and left the country virtually bankrupt. People like Harman can't be taken seriously, and I hope they never will be. Nick Clegg has had a newsflash that promising things in opposition (particularly when you think you have no chance of winning) is a lot easier than implementing them. At least he's admitted it. The Tories are basically right but haven't addressed the fundamental flaws in the British education system. And remember that they introduced GCSEs and were the ones who renamed Polys as universities and started the whole rotten process.

Personally I favour self-learning, augmented by targeted part-time courses, with a healthy dose of the 'university of life' thrown in. And a degree when you can afford it. That's better for all-round development and might just get you a decent job too.