Lee Bunce argues the time has come to change the way our higher education institutions are funded.
Wednesday, 08 October 2008
Another week, another story of social obstruction in our higher education tier. This time, a survey for Halifax Bank indicating that parents help more than half of all students pay their way through university has been reported by the media in a misleadingly benign way. "Students! What are they like?" exclaim the press, "Thanks heavens for the good old bank of Mum and Dad!"
But this way of thinking masks the real significance of the findings, which show a significant increase in parental funding on previous years. That so many students rely on their parents to finance their university career is really just another way of saying that the whole experience is more than the typical student can afford on their own, and once again, poorer students are being unfairly disadvantaged.
In a report that was recently released by the National Union of Students (NUS), it was estimated that the average student is now leaving university with nearly £40,000 worth of debt. The consequences are predictable.
Firstly, students from poorer backgrounds continue to be put off applying for university by what they perceive as unaffordable costs. According to a Sutton Trust report released earlier this year, 59% of students not pursuing university reported that avoiding debt had 'much' or 'very much' affected their decision, while 42% from families earning less than £35,000 are likely to consider a local university.
The second point is those who do proceed to higher education are forced to take part-time term-time work to make up the difference between loans and cost. The NUS again claims that as many as three in every four students takes some kind of paid employment to supplement their student loan. This can range from a few hours a week to an almost full time job, with the obvious relationship that those with greater financial difficulties are working more, and those who work more are spending less time on their degree. That could be the difference between a 1st and a 2:1, or a 2:1 and a 2:2, distinctions that could be crucial as the credit crunch puts more pressure on finding graduate level employment than ever before.
As noted in a recent editorial in this publication, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University Alison Richard, speaking at the Universities UK conference, argued that universities exists purely to educate, not to act as 'engines for promoting social justice'. Alison Richard is wrong. Universities are vehicles of social change, whether they like it or not. In fact that is how they sell it. It has been suggested that an average university graduate could earn £400,000 more than an average non-graduate over the course of a career, and as such universities can play a crucial role stifling or promoting social mobility.
The Labour government has made some positive steps in this respect, albeit rather limited ones. Student loans have risen, as has the starting household income at which parents' income is routinely taken into account when calculating student loans. The number of students receiving non-repayable grants has increased, and is indeed now fairly common.
Here in Scotland, the SNP led government has made its own contribution, making higher education free for Scottish students with its scrapping of the graduate endowment fee earlier this year (although paradoxically the Halifax survey found students in Scotland were the most likely to say that their parents were assisting, with two-thirds saying parents were paying for their studies).
Then we have Universities such as ours who have chipped in with their own grants and bursary systems, and educational charities and trusts also exist who offer students non-repayable grants to students to assist them with their studies. Options are available. But it's simply not enough. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, this is merely to nibble at the consequences of unjust power, instead of redressing the injustice itself, as the Halifax survey itself clearly indicates. When it comes to investing in public services, which Universities still are let's remember, the simple truth is you get get what you pay for.
But there might be a problem here. In a recent league table of world universities compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 17 of the top 20 institutions, and indeed over half of the top 100, were American. Given the unique way in which those universities are funded, how can British universities possibly hope to compete? It's a difficult question, but it could be a misleading one. We may be confusing ends with means.
Take Norway as an example, the nation came top of a UN ranking of the worlds developed nations as the best place for children to grow up in. Over there, public spending accounts for over half of the GDP, and education is free from pre-nursery level to post-graduate, and student loans far exceed those we see in Britain. The result? A far more equal society, with far fewer restrictions to social mobility.
So where do Norway's top universities stand world wide? In that very same table, Norway's finest institution, the University of Oslo came 64th (nine places behind Edinburgh). It's good, but not great.
Perhaps the reason for that is university league tables almost always give a heavy wieghting to research. But as we all know, good research and good teaching are very different things. While generally speaking Norway's universities might not be at the cutting edge of academic research, they are having a profound influnce on Norwegian society.
Source: studentnewspaper.org
