The CBI Higher Education Task Force’s recent report into the funding of Higher Education (HE) will set Britain back 20 years. In its plans for business and universities to work more closely together, it advocated (among other suggestions): raising University tuition fees, removing the interest rate subsidy for student loans, allowing for the number of HE students to decline and encouraging more of them to take up STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects. The problem is that if the CBI’s proposals had been implemented twenty years ago, one of those failing to get a degree would have been me!A personal perspective on higher education
My father brought my three siblings and me to the UK in 1973 to take advantage of the British education system. With ten degrees between us, we certainly did that! Now running four businesses between us, we’d like to think we are paying back for the free education we got. But it would be very different today with the burden of paying tuition fees, few job prospects, rising unemployment, gender and racial discrimination and the burden of low expectations (a particularly acute problem for Asian women).
My father left school at 14 – the son of a wealthy (at the time) timber merchant - he felt no need for an education. Little did he realise that in his forties, he’d have to come to England and spend years doing backbreaking working in two low-paid jobs just to make ends meet. He had few expectations of his children other than they get enough of an education to get a job. Despites these hardships, my father had a lot of pride. He singularly refused to accept state help in the forms of grants. He hated it if any of us “signed on” the dole queue for handouts, preferring us to work on Saturdays and Sundays, in the evenings and during the holidays to pay our way instead.
At the time we were studying, Britain had a generous grants system (not means-tested) that gave us the freedom to choose what we wanted to study, fill out a simple form and get sufficient funds to go and do it. We didn’t even have to worry about tuition fees – at the time these were paid by the state. If, as the CBI report recommends, the maintenance grants are concentrated to “those who are most in need”, we’d all have failed to get state assistance to study. We would probably have qualified under the “means testing” scheme, but my father’s pride would simply have prevented him from signing the forms, revealing our level of need.
Given the re-emphasis on “those who are most in need”, my father would also have felt compelled to guide us down different routes. Those that provided a quicker return and reduced our indebtedness. There would have been a greater focus on working in a bank, nursing perhaps or a clerical apprenticeship. The “luxury” of studying a pure subject at University without having a job in mind before starting out would have been unattainable for us. Given what I know now – that the acquisition of a degree or preferably two is the best passport for getting a job – higher education would have been subordinated in favour of immediate work.
My father also abhorred debt. He would have had sleepless nights worrying about any loan, or outstanding bill. He even hated credit cards much less understood the credit economy. He would not have allowed us to rack up student loans (even the subsidised ones) and would have felt compelled to pressures us (girl siblings) into work or an early “arranged marriage”. Thankfully, at the time the free higher education system in Britain saved us from that. My father didn’t need to think about this daughters’ future until we had all graduated, by which time our educational qualifications had opened up new possibilities for us.
I recall finishing University and walking straight into a job with a blue-chip company within the same week. I am sure my father must have breathed a sigh of relief! Sadly, job prospects have declined dramatically since then and I was disappointed to note the latest figures showing unemployment rising the fastest among 18-25 year olds.
CBI report fails to address a changed world
What the CBI’s report has perhaps failed to do is look at the social, cultural and demographics of our changed world. The CBI speaks for big business at the time when more and more of us are expected to be working in small business. Even the model of a hierarchical work environment (boss/section head/supervisor/employee) has changed to a more collaborative model of a flat structure (remote working, home working, team working).
So given the changed world, I advocate doing exactly the opposite of what the CBI suggests. I propose:
- Encouraging more students into higher education.
- Encouraging more students to get an even greater qualification (an MSc/MA or PhD)
- Greater emphasis on life-long learning with availability of free online courses
- State should offer student loans at 0% interest
- Maintenance grants should be means-tested but less bureaucratic and “those most in need” should be emancipated and considered on their own merit
- Ethnic minority women should be considered a particularly “in need” group and fast tracked into higher education
- Yes, encourage more into STEM subjects, but the emphasis should change to one of ‘scholarship’ of a subject rather than just practicality
- University tuition fees should be scrapped and the burden met by the state.
- Refocus of Universities as centres for learning rather than centres of profit.
- Reduction of the number of foreign students to help make British universities available to Britons first and foremost.
All my suggestions will cost the UK taxpayer plenty. But given that we have an ageing population and a falling birth rate, we are going to need these clever, bright young things to help conceptualise and build the British Eden of the future.
Perhaps its about time we started investing in our future generation and made cost savings elsewhere?
Click below for the CBI's report:
CBI ‘Stronger Together: Businesses and universities in turbulent times’
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