Better Nation

21 Comments

• #1 by soosider on July 12, 2011 - 9:02 am

  

  Some might see this as a somewhat provocative article, however I believe the author raises a very valid point that so far we have only been looking at one side of the equation. Yes I know there are all sorts of arguments about it is only while going through higher education that students might grow into the role, but for a full and meaningful debate we must look at all aspects and research it deeply, that we we may come up with a sustainable long term plan.
  I would also suggest that the stats quoted about proportion of GDP spent on higher education, UK 1.1% & Europe 1.5%, actually tells the story about how this “crisis” actually happened. To my mind it is one created by government as it slowly and surreptitiously withdraws from funding higher education, funding that we as tax payers have already paid for.

• #2 by Jeff on July 12, 2011 - 9:19 am

  

  I absolutely agree with what you’re saying Gary. I was amazed at just how many students at the university I went to (Edinburgh) just mucked about for 2.5 years and then salvaged a 2:1 or 2:2 with last minute cramming. It creates a bit of peer pressure too when the culture is knocking off classes and drinking over lunch rather than applying oneself to what the Government is paying them to be there to do.

  Tony Blair’s arbitrary aim of 50% of students going to university was pretty damaging so, as you say, reversing the numbers at university would be a good thing as it would put a bit of prestige into having a degree again, while also putting more prestige into not having a degree.

• #3 by Gary on July 12, 2011 - 9:41 am

  

  Hi folks,

  Thanks for the comments so far. Just a couple of clarifications/back-covering statements:

  1) The GDP figures I quoted are from a NS leader about 6 months ago, so they may have changed since then (though I doubt any change would negate the point they’re used to illustrate)
  2) As I’m sure somebody will challenge me on where exactly I would cut student numbers, I would say that that should be left to the individual universities to decide but with departments that may be seen as easier to target (such as Humanities, which has been the subject of the more brutal cuts across Scotland over the past year or so) having a certain baseline number of students.
  3) Finally, the number of postgraduate students is not part of this equation. As postgraduates pay fees upfront themselves or have them paid via a bursary/funding scheme (and indeed are one of the major sources of ‘revenue’ (as much as I hate that word) for Universities), it wouldn’t make sense to cut them when it would accrue no financial or, indeed, societal benefit.

  • #4 by Aidan Skinner on July 12, 2011 - 11:33 am

    

    Humanities have been particularly targeted because the Scottish Funding Council (acting on guidance from Mike Russell) declared those courses to be “non-priority” subjects and reduced their funding.

    Also, regarding further education (as opposed to higher education), you know we already spend about 5 times as much on it right?

• #5 by Welshguy on July 12, 2011 - 10:28 am

  

  Absolutely agree. I’d say at least 50% of my classes at university (I did English & Welsh Literature) had little or no interest in literature, they were there merely because they felt they ought to be going to university and had chosen their course pretty arbitrarily as a result.

  The problem is that the absurd idea that everyone ought to go to university has become so ingrained that any reduction in the number of students, and probably, as a result, fewer universities, would almost certainly be seen and portrayed as a bad thing.

• #6 by Indy on July 12, 2011 - 11:20 am

  

  To me the fact that there is a culture of drinking and slacking among students does not mean that the numbers of students should necessarily be cut. It perhaps means that the slackers should be kicked out a little bit faster. But there are many other people who might benefit from a university education but who are unable to take up the opportunity for one reason or another.

  Overall I think what we should be questioning is why we still see student life as revolving around school leavers. Indeed that may be the reason why you have large numbers of people who don’t take it seriously. They haven’t really grown up yet.

  So why don’t we look at this in terms of making it more accessible, not less? The person who is too immature to handle university life at 18 may be completely ready for it at 28 but unable to get back into academic life because they now have work and perhaps family commitments. I think that is a problem. Why should working people not be able to combine work with taking a degree? We should be making it all much more flexible and making it easier to combine work and study. That way employers as well as individuals will benefit and so will the wider economy.

  • #7 by Aidan Skinner on July 12, 2011 - 12:20 pm

    

    The Open University is pretty great at doing this.

    • #8 by Douglas McLellan on July 12, 2011 - 1:26 pm

      

      Agreed. The Open Uni is a fantastic institution and if used properly could even come second to the NHS has Labours greatest idea.

• #9 by Gary on July 12, 2011 - 11:53 am

  

  Hi Aidan,

  I wrote the piece based on my experiences as an HE student, and wouldn’t like to comment on FE as my knowledge of it is rather more limited. I’d imagine, however, that the vocational elements of FE perhaps justify such spending as students can move directly into jobs. As for Humanities, were in agreement (though I should point out it ran at a surplus in Dundee-one of the few schools to do so!)

• #10 by Douglas McLellan on July 12, 2011 - 1:25 pm

  

  This is an excellent piece and chimes with my thinking on HE.

  I was a Uni association VP in the late 90s and even then I was convinced that there were too many people going to university for the wrong reasons.

  There is some muddled thinking even now about the purpose of Unis. Many see them as a key element of social mobility. I would content this is not the case.

  Whilst many graduates in the 3 decades after WWII did come from lower down the social scale it should be realised there was a hugely growing demand for the skills that graduates had so the uni sector was expanded to meet that demand. Thus more people from a lower social background got into uni as the entrance requirements were largely about ability and demand for graduates.

  This is no longer the case. There is not an ever increasing need for graduates so why do some think there is a need for ever increasing student places (or even maintaining courses that are not popular)?

• #11 by Anonymous on July 12, 2011 - 2:27 pm

  

  I find it depressing that on a politics blog entitled ‘better nation’, as derived from a poem by Dennis Lee, frequently misattributed to Alasdair Gray, that we find the usual tiresome broadsides aimed at the humanities, in particular history. This, of course, is the intellectual means by which we examine and understand our past as a society, and find the meaningful foundations with which to approach the future. It seems obvious to me why it is important that we understand this. Indeed all of us on this site, as people interested in our national life, make reference to history all the time, we rely on it to understand the present, yet some seem to expect a serious and critical understanding of our past to simply exist without research and academic work.

  I would like to state first of all that I do agree that there are too many students at universities in Scotland and elsewhere. But if universities are anything, they are not a political tool for politicians to indulge their wet dreams of production lines for engineers and computing science graduates (despite mostly being law, history, politics or economics graduates themselves). It is bitterly ironic and disappointing that a man such as Mike Russell, who studied and made a good living from the humanities and cultural activity, should be taking this stereotypical attitude. There may be too many humanities students, I will concede that, but we now have the situation at most Scots Universities that there is no funding assistance of any real substance available for those wishing to study for a masters in the humanities. In the case of history, this means that we are in real danger of distorting the corpus along class lines. For a bunch of politicos to be dismissive of history as an academic pursuit, or for an SNP member (imagine a national party in Scotland existing without a sense of history – impossible) to regard it as some kind of ‘indulgence’ (might I add much the same applies for a politics graduate approaching philosophy, both in the sense of the Scottish contribution to the world, and because without it his subject would simply not exist in any theoretical sense) is nothing less than ignorance.

  It might occur to some of you that having people recearch precedents with regard to the constitutional makeup of these islands, previous economic recessions, or even the situation in the Middle East might be of some value (albeit not of an immediately quantifiable value – the means by which crude monetarism moulds our universities to its priorities). A frequently held and growing critique of our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan is that we approached them as technical problems rather than as cultures and communities, with not enough understanding of their past or of our own record in these areas. We all know how that ended up. Similarly, the economic crisis was predicated on flaws in mathematical models which made certain assumptions about human nature and social behaviour which were simply not the case, while assuming that, for some bizarre reason, because we were so brilliant, and had such well-refined models, we would not crash and burn this time, even though we always had after past booms of a similar nature.

  Additionally, most of the best universities in the Western world are universities which have significant and substantial research activity in the humanities. This applies even to those which are technically minded – the obvious example being MIT, which of course is home to Noam Chomsky. If you approach a substandard university, such as the University of the West of Scotland (I know it’s a cliche but it is true), invariably the first thing you will notice on a prospectus is a crude attempt to make it’s cultural offering on a vocational basis, which seems to be what British society is aiming for. Lesser universities are all obsessed with vocationalism, this is blindingly obvious. Why, then, shoehorn all of our institutions into what is essentially a failed model?

  Instead of indulging in intellectual cannibalism, I am inclined to agree with Soosider’s assessment of the root of the problem. “I would also suggest that the stats quoted about proportion of GDP spent on higher education, UK 1.1% & Europe 1.5%, actually tells the story about how this “crisis” actually happened.” It is a question of priorities. What kind of country do we want to live in? That immediately requires reference to the past and to our imaginations. In spite of, or even because of, the economic situation we find ourselves in, I believe this question to be the vitally important one it has always been.

• #12 by ratzo on July 12, 2011 - 3:50 pm

  

  % GDP spent on tertiary education institutions:

  Canada (2.3)
  USA (2.4)
  Korea (2.3)
  Finland (1.9)
  Denmark (1.8)
  Finland (1.8)
  Sweden (1.8)
  Australia (1.7)
  Scotland – approx – (1.1)

• #13 by Shuna on July 12, 2011 - 7:32 pm

  

  I have a wee worry about the idea of setting higher entrance requirements for university. And say this through personal experience. My daughter had aspirations to go to Uni but didnt do well enough at school – gaining only 1 higher. She applied to college and was lucky enough to be given the chance to do an HND in Social Sciences. She has worked very hard over the last two years and has passed her HND with really very excellent grades. She applied this year to Uni for Sociology/History, Social Sciences and Social Work – her ultimate aim is to be a social worker working in the rehabilitation of offenders (I know! Why? I have no idea! But this has been her dream for the last four years) Anyway she received offers from almost all the Universities she applied to and will take up a place at RGU in the autumn to train as a social worker.

  Now had university admission requirements been greater when she first left school it is unlikely that she would have been offered the HND place as more ‘qualified’ people would have been offered those places as there would not have been places for them at uni. So instead of looking forward to uni this autumn she most likely would have had to do a social care course then the HND then Uni – spending more time in full time education – costing the govt and us more not less.

  Now she may be the exception (I dont think she is though) but I really think the point you made about students being at uni not through any great desire to be there is the more valid point. But reducing places and therefore curtailing the aspirations of many young people, like my daughter, who do not do well at school but who blossom when studying what actually pushes their buttons and genuinely interests them is not the way forward. Universities need to be more vigorous in assertaining why students want to study the subjects they are applying for. Yes there are arguments for where any cuts in places should be made.

  Another wee point is the way you dismiss ordinary, 2:2 and 3rd class honours – these are still academic achievements and I know many people who gained these levels and are doing very well in their chosen careers. Academic ability is not always a good marker for how good at an actual job someone might be.

  Anyway just a few observations from someone who is a graduate of the Open University (I went college after school) and of Aberdeen University (as a mature student, travelling 100 miles everyday, juggling placements and family etc- but hey thats a whole other argument) with a 2:1 in Divinity which might have ‘qualified’ me for my job but certainly didnt prepare me for it.

• #14 by Gary on July 12, 2011 - 7:54 pm

  

  Hi Anonymous,

  Forgive me if I didn’t make it clear in my initial post, but like you I do sincerely believe that the humanities are one of the most important areas of study in a University; indeed, without such a focus, I don’t think it should be possible for an institution to call itself a University. My choice of “indulge” was not meant as a slur on the subjects at all, but rather was the best word I could use to convey that I don’t believe university should simply be a graduate-churning process but should instead expand and challenge our views.
  As I mentioned previously, Humanities (at least at Dundee) does in fact run at a surplus. You’re entirely correct to point out the atrocious state of PG funding for history too- two of my good friends from University are in fact continuing their studies in Sweden due to the comparative lack of financial opportunities for them at home, demonstrating the “brain drain” that such a dire funding situation creates.
  I’m glad you accepted my general premise regarding numbers, however. I appreciate it’s not the ideal solution, and is certainly far from the easiest for polite society to discuss, but it’s something that should be on the table.

  P.S. I know the UWS President reads this blog, so I’m sure he’ll be on later to discuss the finer points of his institution! 😉

  • #15 by Anonymous on July 15, 2011 - 3:18 am

    

    I do apologise, I had a sneaking suspicion I may have chosen the wrong target, but having already posted I had to live with it. There is a definite sense that the sheer necessity for extremely stringent funding prioritisation in our universities is increasing an essentially blunt anti-intellectual utilitarianism, the sort of suburban dad, Jeremy Clarksonesque “what’s the point of that?” view of academic pursuits, which is very dangerous indeed for any higher education system or institution with pretensions to genuine international quality. It was rather a cheap shot in a sense to target UWS, but I think my point essentially stands; within our university system there is a sense that certain institutions have certain roles, whether that is publicly expressed or not, but it seems that even world-renowned institutions are feeling pressurised into chasing a model that isn’t really appropriate to their strengths or reputation and could ultimately permanently damage them (see Glasgow in particular).

    The basic problem with your entirely accurate (in my opinion) premise regarding numbers is that a politician is simply not willing to say to the electorate that less students should go to university; it is potential electoral poison to tell aspirational parents that their child is less likely to go to university because it might not be the right route for them. I would add that ethically these are very difficult waters to navigate when there are still nowhere near enough young people from the less prosperous end of the social spectrum attending university, a problem which sadly seems to increase with the standard of the institution (see endless headlines concerning Oxford and Cambridge).

• #16 by Gary on July 12, 2011 - 9:55 pm

  

  Hi Shuna,

  Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with you. Without a doubt, the route your daughter has taken has benefited her; however, that’s to the credit of our FE institutions, which sounds like the route that was best for her. Had your daughter got into Uni straight away through increased numbers, she may have not found her niche or otherwise become disenchanted; by going to college, however, she was able to find this and apply at the right time and with the right qualifications and skills set.
  Had there been less numbers, I doubt that many more would apply to colleges etc. From personal experience, the only people that went into FE from my school were those with a specific vocation in mind; those who were knocked back from uni or were advised that they would be instead found jobs. I understand it’ll be different up and down the country, but it’s my belief that a reduction in student numbers in HE would force students to properly assess their post-school options rather than go to uni “because everyone else is”.
  I’m not disagreeing that 2:2s and Thirds are the culmination of 4 years’ work; however, I can guarantee you that 50% of those obtaining those marks at my ceremony were capable of doing better had they properly applied themselves, and the other 50% had struggled to reach that level. Whilst I would never take away from those who had genuine family or personal problems during University that have affected their marks, having seen some of my friends’ essays that were deemed of a 2:2 standard having been started only a few hours before the deadline and with minimal research or thought has probably soured my views. Having said all of that, I know of at least one senior partner in an Edinburgh law firm with a Desmond (2:2) so I don’t doubt for a second some individuals can still climb to the top of their chosen careers!

• #17 by Cameron on July 12, 2011 - 10:48 pm

  

  I’m a 3rd year science student at Glasgow University, we have 9 o’clock lectures to which even when frequent attendance checks were made only just above 50% of the class actually turned up. Admittedly they would turn up for the 10 to 5 labs but that was more rigorously enforced. Whether you would turn up to a 9am lecture is surely a good measure of how dedicated someone is to a course.

  I still think the first thing to go should be the 4 year degree in favour of a 3 year degree. My first year was EXACTLY the same as 6th year of school so why not just make it so people who attend university have to do sixth year first, also would help deal with overcrowding which is certainly a problem at Glasgow (hence 5pm lectures, an inability to get a computer on campus for much of the day and Saturday exams). To be fair my second year also had basically nothing to do with what I’m doing now.

• #18 by Czkelly on July 13, 2011 - 12:16 pm

  

  Cameron, I completely agree with you regarding the switch to 3 year degrees. This easy change would make economic sense and bring Scotland into line with comparable European nations.

  Gary, I think this is an excellent article and to be honest, I believe you’ve just said what we’ve all been wanting to say for a long time. Having also been involved in student politics, for my sins I guess, I am also fully aware that those who proclaim to maintaining student numbers are on the whole following a line which is safe and lacks conviction.

  The reality is that universities recruit students in accordance to the amount of money they receive from the SFC. It’s not an exact science, and if a university accepts more students than the SFC grant will cover, then it is the university who must pay for the tuition of these extra students. Thus, as the SFC grants to universities decrease – or at best stay static – the response from universities will be to recruit less students. Ultimately, in a round-about way, allowing less money in the system for a period of time will drive down student numbers and achieve the aim that Gary – and I believe many more of us – think is the right way to go for HE.

  The funding crisis that HE faces is not exactly the perfect environment to raise my objection to the debate – but I’m going to anyway. We talk of ‘free education’ but we ignore the astronomical fees for Masters and PHD students. Gary, you point to education as an end in itself, you say we should allow gifted individuals to follow their passions, as you rightly point out ‘this differentiates us from the animals’. But surely this form of academic pursuit does not end with achieving an undergraduate? Surely we want to help these people through their formal training; undergraduate, master, PHD – and into their academic career as teachers and researchers.

  Other European states understand this and are currently recruiting UK students in large numbers due to their very small fees at postgraduate – or in some cases no fees at all. It seems to me very likely that people who go to the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, or Sweden for their postgraduate – unable to pay the fees they’d be charged at home – are likely to stay to pursue their academic careers in those countries. Ultimately we have a different problem, we have the beginnings of an academic brain drain. This will in time diminish the impressive worldwide prestige that Scottish universities have held.

  The abuse of international foreign students as cash cows will be the other serious dent in our prestige, but that’s another argument for another time.

  Great article!

• #19 by Czkelly on July 13, 2011 - 12:28 pm

  

  p.s.

  I should have read the comment from ‘anonymous’ before my post – I completely concur (whilst I’m equally aware that Gary was certainly not bashing the humanities).

• #20 by NoneoftheAbove on August 2, 2011 - 3:38 am

  

  I’m going to bring the backslapping on this thread to an abrupt end. I have to contest in the strongest terms the idea that higher education should simply be for the passionate. Is primary and secondary education simply for the passionate? No, and that’s as it should be, because for all the foibles of these sectors they largely enrich their participants regardless of their zeal. Now it goes without saying that a significant number of primary and secondary pupils do not receive the standard or type of education they deserve but these are issues of reform not abolition. We don’t say X numbers of pupils are leaving primary are secondary school inadequately literate or numerate or otherwise fulfilled and therefore we should reduce the number of places in formative schools. We instead ask ourselves (or should) what can be done to raise attainment and make the sectors better for all recipients.

  Higher education should be no different. If students are not sufficiently prepared or motivated we should be asking why that is, without jumping to casual and uncharitable assumptions, and determining what support can be put in place within the system to address any issues. Managing the transition from secondary to higher education is a problem, and ensuring students receive adequate pastoral care while at university is another. Just a couple of possibilities for lifting up the current student body you seem content to completely bypass. The fact that students have varying degrees of motivation, ability and certainty as to future prospects is a contemptible motive for seeking to clumsily exclude them from the beneficial privilege of higher education. It seems to me that you are uncomfortable with diverse personalities and histories and seek to extrapolate from your own experience to a narrow concept of higher education.

  I utterly reject the idea that intellectual improvement should be the preserve of an elite, incisive of mind and with the energy of a Duracell bunny. We should be comfortable with the idea that people will attend university from different starting points and reach varying end points, all of value, neither easy to reduce to a sound bite nor static. Some people wile away their time university unaware where it will lead, nor figuring that out until after they leave, and that frankly should be none of your concern. You need to relax and stop thinking everyone needs to tread the same rigid path. Your article I’m afraid reeks of the 2.1 class graduate with a complex, bent on hardening the distinction between him and allegedly lowlier peers who would have better spent their time learning to accept their intellectually stilted, work-ethically stunted station. This is an all too common mentality of those with certain degree classifications who often semi-consciously attempt to kick the ladder down for their peers as a self-aggrandising enterprise rooted more in ego than fact.

  Your broadside against anyone with less than a 2.1 and people on benefits is absurd. So what if some students end up on the dole for a bit? Many use benefits are they’re intended, a stopgap on the road to better things. Who are you to judge their situation on the flimsiest of prospectuses? You seem to pluck figures out of the air that smack of a smug prejudice about what people could have, should have or shouldn’t have had to opportunity to achieve at university or thereafter. It all amounts to a clunking, judgemental analysis missing an altogether more complicated picture. Not an inopportune moment to mention the First Minister of Scotland achieved a 2.2 and a distinguished career as an economist. And graduates regardless of discipline and irrespective of degree classification do significantly better economically than their non-university educated peers. It’s not a leap of the imagination to deduce that as the roots of the Enlightenment can be traced to Scotland’s ground breaking universal primary education policy, that there is also a social dividend from widely accessible Scottish higher education.

  I also wonder what exactly you propose the people forced to forgo higher education should do with their time. Do you realise there are several people chasing every job (running into dozens in some areas), many of whom I presume you want to dump into the labour market? Do you furthermore realise how much it costs for someone to be on benefits for a year? A not dissimilar amount to what is spent educating someone for that same year. I think educating people is more productive than sapping their self-esteem through the degrading regime of the modern Job Centre. And if you want to talk about benefits to society I don’t think the jobless will thank you for thousands of additional competitors, otherwise tucked away in higher education.

  I’m not indifferent to providing alternatives to higher education and doubtless some students enter the system and are ill suited to it. Hacking back access is not the solution. The way to tackle dropout, failure and under-achievement is a combination of strengthening the fabric of student support and offering attractive alternatives to higher education. A properly funded national apprenticeship scheme with a diverse and enticing range of opportunities could be one such alternative.

  I also completely repudiate the idea from a commenter of ‘sub-standard’ universities. It’s common-a-garden snobbery. Newer universities have been set up with the express aim of catering for people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, by virtue of their circumstances having achieved lower/fewer secondary qualifications. It takes time for an institution to build up a reputation, and break through the prejudice of low expectations. This doesn’t negate the good work that they do against the odds. And on the theme of grades raising entrance requirements and having artificially high entrance requirements is generally crude and elitist. It privileges those who have excelled during a narrow window of time (normally due to economic privilege, but also other factors) and excludes the slow burners who with the right encouragement will flourish, often surpassing previously higher achieving peers.

• #21 by Gary Cocker on August 2, 2011 - 12:05 pm

  

  First off, I think the personal nature of some of your comments is a bit unneccessary for a blog that is meant to spark political debate, and not personal diatribes and ill-informed venom. However, the fact it was posted in the wee hours of the morning anonymously after either a lack of sleep or feeling what I believe is termed by Private Eye as “tired and emotional” meant it was somewhat inevitable.
  You are right about my ego (as it was a 1st I received and not a 2:1 as you guess incorrectly), but seem to assume that I am automatically dismissing all of those with less than a 2:1 as either slackers or unworthy of a place. Far from it; indeed, many of my good friends from Uni received 2:2s (including my better half) and, although some themselves would admit to this being due to a lack of work ethic on their own behalf, many others had mitigating circumstances in their personal or academic lives. I believe that the degree classifications automatically separate people in the minds of employers and so don’t quite understand your accusation that I’m seeking to swot away my former classmates; in fact, I can assure you I take equally (if not more) pride in being a Dundee graduate and a Dundonian born and bred than I do in the small print of my transcript.
  You quite rightly bring up Alex Salmond as one individual who received a 2:2 and went on to great success; indeed, I know of at least one senior partner in a prestigious law firm with a “Desmond” as well.

  However, the fact that these degrees were earned in the days when only 10% of school leavers or so would go on to University is important. My issue is not necessarily with those who get lower degree classifications, but with those who do so having obtained results from school that suggest further academic pursuit is not for them. Primary and secondary education is a vital part of any citizen’s life and I would never suggest tearing that away; however, I would equally never suggest that Universities should be practically compulsory as you seem to be.

  You mention the economic and financial cost of benefits versus University and the current economic downturn. Do you honestly believe that the best thing for this is for us to bury our heads in the sand and to perpetuate the funding crisis in higher education by encouraging all our young people to go to University? Fees covered by the Scottish Government and loans given out by SAAS would then become astronomical, and if everybody went to University it would then completely and utterly devalue degrees. As a graduate that looked at the job market for a while before I was lucky enough to receive a funded PG, I can assure you that, regardless of whether or not you’re a graduate, there’s few jobs out there. Why then add 4 years of economic inactivity and debt to yourself if there’s no discernible benefit unless it is purely for the love and passion of a subject?

  In contrast, a slight cut in student numbers would free up more money to support those from poorer backgrounds who would otherwise feel restricted in applying for HE (incidentally, I actually quite like the idea of the admissions policies of some Universities in the USA where a student’s schooling/socio-economic background is taken into account upon application).

  You say I’m “forcing” people to forgo higher education. I’m not- what I’m saying is that people who have the right skills and passion should quite rightly be allowed to further their education into more specialised fields. Your argument seems to be akin to those who give all the kids medals at Sports Day or don’t keep count at kid’s football games- it’s an unrealistic, ridiculously soft outlook on life where everybody’s a winner. The fact is that University isn’t for everyone, just like accountancy isn’t, or medicine isn’t, or computing isn’t. You argue that everyone, regardless of their motivation or ability, should be given a chance at Uni; the next logical step from that is no admissions policy and thus anybody can have a go at anything. It’s ridiculous.

  The woolly thinking you display on this is exactly what’s been wrong with the Higher Education debate for years, and that has indirectly led to a generation of students disillusioned with politics by promising them a land of milk and honey if they’re one of the 50% that go to Uni. An economy is and should be built of a diverse set of individuals with different skills and education levels, not by a nation of average graduates struggling under crushing debt and struggling to find a job at degree-level.

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