Without understanding what parts of the status quo are propped up by the mass import of people, and how, and why, any move to cut headline numbers is going to run aground on the consequences of so doing.
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.
Our university courses should look more like those in other countries and assume less specialist prior knowledge. Maybe the arrival of the Government’s four year life long learning loan is an opportunity for change.
The Government is now trying to make T levels the main vocational alternative to A levels. It is not clear that they can take on such a big role.
The twenty-sixth article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
Better skills not only improve the earning power of families, they also drive aspiration, social mobility, and ambition, while rewarding those who work hard – all fundamental Conservative values.
This leads us to the biggest danger of all – that the Conservative Party thinks it can fight a cultural war on the side of apprenticeships which are good against universities which are bad.
In this new system, collegesd would be allowed to set their own tuition fees for home undergraduates, above the level of the state loan.
Apprenticeships have been an essential part of precision manufacturing for decades, but in much of our country it’s the degree scroll and the graduation ceremony that have become the hallmark of success.
And this is the fundamental problem: it allows us to dodge a broader long-term industrial strategy, precisely because the short-term labour fix is so easy.
A bill was introduced in the 2021 Queen’s Speech that introduced a bold approach to restoring academic freedom and meaningful debate at universities. Why isn’t it yet in the Statute Book?
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 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.