University was doomed to fail when it became ‘uni’
This could just be me, but don’t most of the present problems in higher education date from that dire day when university first became “uni”? University used to be a rather intimidating place where you went to be taught by people much cleverer than yourself. You had to be do really well in exams to get to university. Many bright, capable kids concluded, quite sensibly, that it was not for them.
As for uni… well, uni is something else entirely. A youthful rite of passage. Somewhere to make new mates, party hard and do some studying, of course, because you need to be a graduate to get pretty much any job these days. But you can get a 2:1 “easy”. When I asked a friend’s daughter what made her choose Newcastle, she replied that drinks were much cheaper than down South.
It was the barmy aspiration of Tony Blair’s New Labour government to get 50per cent of young people into university that led indirectly to the almighty cock-up today.
As Theresa May said, setting out her vision this week for post-school education, we now have “one of the most expensive systems of university tuition in the world”.
If nearly half of your youngsters are at university (in Germany, it’s 27per cent) and, unlike teenagers in other countries, they expect to live away from home, then it’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money. Furthermore, if you say some top universities are allowed to charge £9,250 a year in fees and you hope that considerably less good ones will end up being much cheaper, then a) you are a shortsighted politician, b) clueless about human nature, or c) both of the above.
A Cambridge law degree is worth ending up in £50,000 of debt, the average today for a graduate; a law degree from Middlesex University is not. Those unis that charge the full whack for four “contact hours” a week with inadequate lecturers should be ashamed of themselves for duping eager young people.
Just to make matters worse, many so-called graduates are a lot less literate and numerate than my mother, who left school at 16 to study shorthand-typing at the local tech. Plenty of 22-year-olds find themselves applying for OK jobs which they could once have got without a degree and humongous debt. Among my daughter’s friends, some of the smartest cookies have dropped out of “party-party” universities and started work, or not bothered going in the first place. Disillusion is a good teacher.
The Prime Minister’s frankly bizarre suggestion of reducing the cost of an arts degree will do nothing to solve any of the above. (We desperately need graduates in engineering and computer science… why not slash fees for those?) We should gradually reintroduce a cap on student numbers; 30per cent sounds about right. That will force universities to compete and drive down fees. Daft courses will go to the wall. Normal jobs will no longer be “graduates-only”. The focus needs to shift to vocational training. It’s estimated that the state subsidises young people going to university to the tune of £22,000. Why shouldn’t other kids get a slice of that cake to help them with apprenticeships?
The Tories must call out Jeremy Corbyn’s dishonest and unaffordable promise to abolish student fees altogether. From April, new graduates will pay 9per cent of everything they earn above an annual salary threshold of £25,000 (repayments for someone earning £30,000 would be £450). That’s pretty good value. If you went to a place that gave you a worthwhile education, that is.
It’s called a university.