The commercialisation of higher education has helped transform once elite centres of learning into remedial sectors for failing comprehensives, too ready to take authoritarian cash.
These 18 year olds may not wish to do a full honours degree. But it should be far easier for them to be funded to get to level four or five – Higher National Certificates, Higher National Diplomas etc.
We once again need to make the case for free markets, free speech, and free people. We need to particularly reach young professional people and get them to join our cause.
In terms of academic freedom, it is a game-changer. It is already having an impact – as can be seen by the way in which Oxford’s Student Union rapidly u-turned on a decision to bar the Oxford Union from Fresher’s Fair.
The electoral punishment of getting policy wrong now could be long-lasting.
A timely report – from Ed Balls, no less – suggests that a lack of graduates is not the reason for our productivity deficit. Rather, our productivity deficit explains the lack of graduate-level jobs.
I could not in good conscience allow a Bill to continue that would have fundamentally changed the nature of the way we interact with one another for the worse.
Katharine Birbalsingh’s departure gives the Commission an opportunity to focus on families, employers and colleges too.
Risk and income sharing agreements allow institutions and students to become partners and shift losses on poor-value courses away from taxpayers.
Austerity and the cost of living are doubtless going to dominate the Government agenda, but the summer gave us a glimpse of what ‘Sunakism’ would look like.
These may take time to bear fruit, but must reassure the markets now that the growth path in expenditure will be measurably lower. Such measures must involve doing less, as well as doing things differently.
The number of young people into higher education keeps on rising and has gone over 50 per cent. It is nothing to do with any target.
Getting more A* students to Oxbridge or building more technical colleges is not equal to the task of poor quality degrees, cancel culture, and pointless student debt.
Modularised courses could help to prepare learners for work in growth sectors whilst reversing decline in strategic industries.
I have written to university leaders, and will ask the Office for Students to investigate whether official responses to hateful conduct or open support for Hamas have been appropriate.