The Eiffel Tower in the middle with the logos of the Labour and Conservative Parties in the sky on either side

On:
In: Education, HE policy, Politics, Skills
Tagged: , , , ,

Reflections for the higher education sector from the Autumn Labour and Conservative Party conferences The story goes that the French writer Guy de Maupassant ate lunch every day in the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Not out of any fondness for their croques monsieur, but rather because it was the only place in Paris where he didn’t have to look at the tower as he dined. So it is with party conferences. You can only really see what went on from a safe distance. In the midst of the assault on your sleep, diet and liver, it’s hard to read the room.Read More →

On:
In: Education, HE funding, tuition fees, & student loans, HE policy, Politics, Skills

Forget about canaries, the signs of impending doom are more like the sound of cracking rock thundering through the coal mine and debris collapsing around us. Here are just two recent signs. Sign 1 New research recently revealed that now more than half of supposedly full-time undergraduates are doing paid work for more than 15 hours a week and nearly a quarter have full-time jobs alongside their studies to make ends meet. The idea that students whinge about not having enough money is nothing new. (There are even a jokes about it in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale from the fourteenth century.) But we have reach a differentRead More →

On:
In: Careers education, information, advice & guidance, Education, Employability, Skills, Student choice
Tagged: , , , , ,

Last week, the DfE announced that it was setting up a £12 million fund to encourage employers to offer work experience for T levels. Good news, right? Well, partly. If T Levels are ever going to be a mainstream success as a vocational qualification, they are going to need a lot more employer engagement. I mean a lot. When you have a bold and ambitious policy, you don’t get it to fly by giving it half a feather instead of a full set of wings

On:
In: Admissions and access, Careers education, information, advice & guidance, Education, Employability, Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility, Student choice
Tagged: , , , , , ,

I don’t think I agree with the idea of university as a ‘failsafe’, although I’m still not sure I understand what you intend by the word. So I’m going to use Matt Pinkett’s line: ‘Aim for whatever you want to do, and if you don’t get it, well, at least you can go to university.’ That assumes that whatever you want to do won’t be best achieved by going to uni. Obviously, university is not the best route for everything or for everyone, but for the vast majority of the best paid and most secure jobs, it is – if not a prerequisite – at least aRead More →

On:
In: Admissions and access, Careers education, information, advice & guidance, Education, Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility, Student choice, Student information
Tagged: , ,

There is plenty of research showing a significant earnings premium on average for graduates regardless of background. Probably the most comprehensive work is the paper by the IFS ‘How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background’. The Sutton Trust has also done many excellent studies on different aspects of this question which is actually a lot more complex than it sounds.

On:
In: Education, HE funding, tuition fees, & student loans, HE policy
Tagged: , , , , , , ,

The media coverage of my paper for HEPI Fairer Funding: the case for a graduate levy has been widespread and the reactions surprisingly favourable. While there haven’t been many people getting out the bunting and ticker tape, many people seem to agree that it is an interesting proposal and it is right and timely to address the question of employer contributions to the cost of higher education.  The most common complaint, however, appears to be to deny that market forces have any place in higher education. One tweet read: You’ve made the fundamental mistake of assuming that market forces can be made to operate efficientlyRead More →

On:
In: Education, Employability, Fair access, HE funding, tuition fees, & student loans, HE policy, Social mobility
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Read Fairer funding: the case for a graduate levy (HEPI Policy Note) and, exclusively on this site, Fairer funding: the case for a graduate levy (full proposal). What I’d like for Christmas: We should abolish tuition fees. We should fund English universities well enough that they can continue to be among the best in the world. We should match graduates and jobs so that they have the right skills to get jobs they want and succeed in them. We should ensure that the nation’s skills gaps are plugged.  We shouldn’t ask the taxpayer to pay for more than the public benefit of higher education.  IsRead More →