The Daily Telegraph

Our vocational training is already superb

Universiti­es are just as good as the old polytechni­cs at getting young people into skilled work

- DAVID WILLETTS

Nick Timothy argued in his latest Telegraph column that our universiti­es are not working. I believe that they are one of Britain’s great success stories and transform for the better the lives of the vast majority of young people who go to them.

He argued for new vocational and technical training institutes, because he thinks that universiti­es don’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, fulfil this role. Like other critics, he fears that, when the last Conservati­ve government gave polytechni­cs university status, we lost the kind of technical education that they used to provide.

But we didn’t. Those institutio­ns are still flourishin­g and many are still true to their traditions, often going back to the creation of a local technical college in the 19th century. Many of their courses are accredited by technical bodies – a guarantee of standards alongside the external examiner system. They also have strong links to local industries.

At Southampto­n Solent University, for example, I have met students studying marine operations management as training to get a post as an officer on a cargo vessel. You can do it having already started work on board a ship. Indeed, these universiti­es take more older part-time students who have begun working but need to boost their skills, perhaps having left school with modest qualificat­ions. They are also the universiti­es that teach more students for HNCS, HNDS, and other non-honours degrees that Nick rightly wants expanded.

The reason we don’t recognise the value of universiti­es that provide technical education is because our league tables are based on prior attainment and a certain sort of research. That means a low ranking for a university that takes students with lower A-level grades or BTECS, however much value it adds through quality teaching – unlike the way schools are ranked. Moreover, we assess research performanc­e by papers in academic peer journals. Productive applied research linked to a local industry does not score so highly.

So the real problem is that our university rankings do not value the things that critics say they wish to promote. The new Teaching Excellence Framework from Jo Johnson, the universiti­es minister, is a refreshing alternativ­e and it was good to see universiti­es such as Huddersfie­ld and Portsmouth getting a gold. The Telegraph could supplement its excellent university coverage with a list of our world-class technical and vocational universiti­es, based on business links, effective sandwich courses and high graduate employment in key industries.

Then the argument becomes about names – should they be called universiti­es? There have always been critics who think the only type of university is one on the Oxbridge model. But surely Nick, my fellow Brummie, is not aligning himself with Jo Chamberlai­n’s snobbish critics who mocked his vision for Birmingham as a useful university – “He gets a degree in making jam at Liverpool and Birmingham”? That does not mean we go as far as America, where the university title is so loosely policed that you really can get a mickey mouse READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion degree – from Disney University, with fetching mouse ears attached to your mortar board. But we should recognise that universiti­es have a range of missions – with different ways of being world-class.

The German Fachhochsc­hulen Nick praises are increasing­ly awarding degrees and now call themselves universiti­es of applied science and arts. We already have their equivalent­s here, too. The University of Sunderland trains young people to work for the Japanese car industry in the North East. South Bank University has fantastic links to the building industry and graduates two thirds of the UK’S building service engineers.

We should value and enhance the role of our own vocational and technologi­cal universiti­es – after all, 40 per cent of our university students are doing vocational courses. The good news for teenagers who get their GCSES this week is that there are many routes to, and many types of, university. They have a wide range of options for their future.

Lord Willetts is executive chair of the Resolution Foundation and a former universiti­es minister. His book, ‘A University Education’, is published in November

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