The Great University Con

by David Craig

  The Broken University also refutes the idea that government spending on Higher Education would categorically generate more economic growth (or benefits) than if this money was spent (or saved) by taxpayers:

  “As it is impossible to predict if more economic growth will be generated if the £14.3 billion is spent by the taxpayer in the local community or if it is spent on Higher Education, then there is no evidence to show that there will be any economic benefit from the annual £14.3 billion subsidy to Higher Education.”323

  Moreover, there appear to be no reports looking at what benefit to the economy could have been realised if the £14.3 billion Higher Education spending had been directed at supporting a much smaller (half?) number of students and thus having more financial resources per student enabling improved teaching and lower tuition fees so that better–educated students could graduate with much lower levels of debt than many of today’s students. Nor are there any reports analysing the economic benefits if a greater percentage of students studied more useful courses such as STEM subjects, so that more of them found well–paid employment after graduation, rather than UK companies having to recruit from abroad to meet their skills needs. In addition, most reports lauding the value of the annual £14.3 billion spent on Higher Education don’t consider the possible benefits to the economy if this money had been spent on other public goods like roads, railways, police officers, power stations, doctors and so on.

  Furthermore, government is generally an inefficient conduit for investment, meaning that every pound of government investment will cost the taxpayer significantly more than a pound in tax. Some economists have placed a figure on the difference between how much the government spends versus how much this spending achieves, suggesting that, due to administration costs, waste and incompetence, the government actually realises only around 40 pence worth of services for every pound taken in taxation and spent.

  The central point of The Broken University is that university is not free, somebody must pay for it. And money used for Higher Education is money that could have been used for other purposes. Those who pay for our universities and those who have their budgets limited as money is diverted to Higher Education are entitled to an honest assessment of the value that Higher Education spending adds to wider society. Unfortunately, the inflexible beliefs of expansion’s vested interests about the economic and social benefits of Higher Education act to prevent a rational and balanced analysis of the impact and value of expansion.

  The economic impact of expansion

  If we take our cue from The Broken University and set aside the bromides of politicians and vice chancellors to measure the actual economic impact of expansion, it would be more accurate to sum it up thus: “Expansion appears to have had no discernible impact on the UK’s national economic performance”.

  For decades now, we have been lectured on how vital university expansion is for our future economic performance. These strictures have repeated the importance of a more productive workforce to compete internationally or spoken about the significance of expansion in enabling the UK’s transition to a “high skills” economy. Unfortunately, the reality has not matched the rhetoric. If we examine the period 1978–2011, we can see the following economic trends:

  There has been no step change in the growth of the UK’s GDP during this period.324 In other words, the UK’s economic growth has continued much as it did prior to expansion

  There have been no significant changes to the UK’s productivity as measured by our GDP per capita figures325

  There have been no noticeable increases in average salaries to reflect ever more graduates entering the jobs market

  Given that the growth rates of GDP, productivity and average salaries have remained broadly consistent before and during expansion, it is hard to accept the idea that more graduates have created a more efficient and better–paid national workforce. In other words, there is very little evidence of a bang for all of those bucks.**

  To illustrate this point, Figure 1 compares the rate of UK GDP growth with the percentage increase in the number of people in Higher Education – the UK Higher Education Initial Participation Rate (HEIPR) – between 1978 and 2011.

  Figure 1 - UK GDP growth against UK HE participation rate

  From looking at the chart, there is no obvious link between the dashed line representing GDP and the solid line showing the increase in the Higher education participation rate. The growth rate of GDP seems largely unaffected by the tripling in the numbers of people moving into higher education.

  Figure 2 compares the percentage increase in UK productivity (GDP per capita) with the percentage increase in the number of people in Higher Education.

  Figure 2 - UK GDP per capita against UK HE participation rate326

  From 1990 onwards, the dramatic growth in the Higher Education participation rate has in no way been matched by corresponding increases in productivity. Exactly why the UK’s productivity growth has remained so flaccid in the face of a huge influx of social science and arts graduates into the economy will probably have to remain one of the great economic mysteries of our time.

  Moreover, there have been no significant increases in real average pay across the UK. Figure 3 tracks the rate of increase in UK average pay against the rate of increase in Higher Education participation between 1978 and 2011 (using 1978 as the index year). The increase in the national average wage that has occurred is not remotely proportional to the massive increases in Higher Education participation.

  Figure 3 - Increases in average UK pay and UK HE participation 1978 -2011327

  This makes it difficult to see where the increased tax revenues from graduates will come from, or how the graduate premium has been maintained during expansion. If expansion has increased the number of graduates and the graduate premium has allegedly remained intact, then it follows that there should have been a proportionate increase in real terms average pay. Scotland, for example, has had a significantly higher Higher Education participation rate than the rest of the UK for a long time, and yet this has made no discernible difference to its economic performance. Germany, with a Higher Education participation rate of just over half that of the UK, has consistently outperformed the UK economically.

  This point has been made repeatedly by economists studying the link between education and national economic performance. They suggest that there is little hard evidence that an increase in graduate numbers will significantly improve national economic performance. Professor Wolf offered this warning in 2002: “It is no more self–evident that since some education makes some of us rich, more would make more of us richer than it is that ‘two aspirin good’ means ‘five aspirin better’.” 328

  The additional economic costs of expansion

  Expansion has brought with it a series of additional costs – liabilities which are never placed against the benefits claimed for an expanded Higher Education system. These include the loss of tax revenues from students who could be working, the hidden cost of family support, the escalating cost of student drop–outs and the massive growth in the amount of bad student debt. Here we’ll just look at the cost of drop–outs. The astonishing growth of student bad debt will be covered in Chapter 13 The Student Loans Fiasco.

  The cost of student drop-outs

  In 2012, the non–completion rate for undergraduate students in UK universities was a worrying 22%.329 By 2015 this figure had improved marginally to 19.8%. But it still meant that about 1 in 5 students were leaving universities with debt but no degree. More importantly, as the Daily Mail noted, these average figures masked huge variation in rates at different universities: “The University of East London has lost 46.2 per cent of its degree students, Bolton University 45.1 per cent..... The University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland has lost 51.4 per cent. In contrast, Cambridge lost just 2.8 per cent, Oxford 4.2 per cent.”330

  Figure 4 illustrates the UK univer
sities with the five best and worst completion rates in 2012. There is a massive gap between these.

  Figure 4 - Degree completion rates in England in 2012331

  Drop–outs create serious cost implications for the individual students, universities and the taxpayer. For the individual, they receive no degree and often no academic credit, but significant debt. If we concentrate on full–time undergraduates, a 20% non–completion rate across nearly 1.21 million full–time domestic students equates to 240,000 students dropping out each year. Expansion is now creating 240,000 young people a year with debt and little to show for it. This is not the social mobility promised by expansion – it is regressive, wasteful and stupid.

  Drop–outs also create additional expense through the wastage they cause within universities. In 2001, Professor Mantz Yorke estimated the cost of drop–outs to UK universities at about £200 million annually. For some peculiar reason, the Higher Education system has not seen fit to commission more recent research into this important subject.332 More worryingly, rather than universities with high drop–out rates being criticised, fined or even closed down by funding bodies, they remain able to recruit roughly the same number of students, year after year, regardless of the cost to students and taxpayers.

  * * *

  ** There is an argument that without expansion there would have been a reduction in GDP growth as the UK struggled to maintain a human capital advantage in the face of increased global competition. This argument runs into difficulties, however, when we consider Western countries (such as Switzerland) which did not adopt expansion and outperformed the UK economically over the same period. It is also requires us to accept on faith that such a reduction a) occurred and b) was neatly redressed by expansion to such an extent that it maintained existing growth rates…

  CHAPTER TWELVE: SCHOOLS: SUPPLYING COURSE FEE FODDER?

  “Almost half of academics (48 per cent) and nearly as many administrators and professional staff (43 per cent) do not think that students are well prepared for university study by their schooling, while just 28 per cent of academics and 38 per cent of administrators believe that students have a good grounding for higher study.” Times Higher Education Supplement Teaching Survey 2017333

  A key factor in the decline of standards within universities has been the inability of schools to produce sufficient numbers of the quality of applicants required by expansion. This situation is not entirely the fault of schools. The New Labour pledge to ensure that 50% of young people attended university by 2010 put immense pressure on schools (and the education system as a whole) to produce a completely unrealistic step change in the number of university applicants. This pressure ultimately contributed towards a culture of “teaching to the test”, so that as many school leavers as possible meet the minimum entry requirements for university, rather than the minimum academic quality needed to actually benefit from Higher Education.

  It was at this point where the spirit of the Robbins’ Principle was broken. Consequently, we have a vicious cycle in which university expansion places pressure on schools to produce more course fee fodder to fill up universities. This leads to schools focusing on quantity of qualifications at the expense of quality of learning and to universities receiving increasing numbers of school leavers who are unable to work at undergraduate level. In response, universities then reduce their own standards in teaching and assessment, creating a downward spiral.

  Defining the quality of school leavers is, of course, subjective and it is particularly difficult making comparisons between different generations of students. Despite this, it is possible to consider several key areas such as qualifications, subject knowledge, study skills, literacy, numeracy and motivation to illustrate how and why many schools are failing universities and school leavers alike. In each of these areas, there is plenty of evidence from academics, counsellors and even students to suggest that many school leavers are finding themselves unprepared for and often overwhelmed by the demands of Higher Education.

  Study skills

  “One of the things that one notices in student essays is how much damage has been done by the imposition of artificial structures for essay–writing. They’ve been drilled into writing a particular way, making particular kinds of arguments in a particular order and not writing their own ideas or responding to questions in a fresh and original way.” Robert Tombs, Professor of History, Cambridge University334

  “... undergraduates when they arrive, don’t seem to know how to write essays. People who are undoubtedly extremely bright are grappling with difficulties in that area which once upon a time would have been inconceivable.”335 David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean history, Cambridge University336

  As the quotes above suggest, UK universities, including Oxbridge, face serious difficulties in teaching the current generation of students. Even bright and capable students with excellent exam results are struggling to cope when they leave an increasingly spoon–fed and modularised environment within schools. The above quotations are from academics at a prestigious university, working with the brightest undergraduates. If students with A grades may need remedial classes in essay–writing and basic skills, what is this likely to mean for those undergraduates arriving at university with two E grades?

  The shift from A–levels to university has traditionally been challenging for undergraduates. This difficulty derives from the differences between directed and self–directed study. Whilst GCSEs and A–levels have set syllabuses and close monitoring by teachers, degrees have longer and more nebulous reading lists and little or no specific direction from an academic. Undergraduates are supposed to develop into fully–independent learners during the course of a degree. They are not necessarily supposed to arrive as independent learners at induction. But they are expected to have the ability to think critically, to discuss complex and abstract ideas and to respond effectively, both verbally and orally.

  Increasingly, academics are complaining that many school leavers have few of these skills. It is not that they are any less intelligent, rather that they have not been trained to think or write independently or critically. Often undergraduates arrive with an expectation that they will be spoon–fed answers rather than having to work them out for themselves. The consequence is a widening gap between A–levels and degrees. This leaves universities with the choice of failing large cohorts of students or finding some way to bridge this gap. In 2009, the Select Committee report noted: “Many universities find themselves having to offer classes in essay–writing because students are unable to write critically.”337 The Select Committee commented that this problem was not only being identified by academics, but also by the students: “One study showed that the majority of first–year university undergraduates felt that A–levels had not prepared them for university.”338

  This realisation must be particularly difficult for students who have achieved high grades at A–levels but then found the move to degree–level study much harder than anticipated. This is likely to be a significant factor behind the growing levels of student stress reported at Oxbridge. In 2010, Professor Guy Claxton, an expert on learning, noted that 15–20% of Cambridge students were being referred to academic counsellors. In the same year, a total of 1,200 students were referred at Oxford. He claimed that:

  “... these high–achieving youngsters are becoming more and more vulnerable because they are being spoon–fed more and more efficiently by their teachers to get them through their exams. There is more modularisation, more packaging and learning is more chopped up.”339

  Multiple submissions to the 2009 Select Committee described a generation of undergraduates with good qualifications who were struggling with undergraduate study. Professor Roger Brown mentioned: “...more students than previously who were ‘not well prepared for degree–level entry, and this is true even for students with good A–level results’.”340

  In 2009, the think tank Reform argued that A–l
evel exams were producing a generation of “Satnav” students, unable to think independently and direct their own learning: “The 5.5m A–level papers sat each year contain ‘nonsense questions’ that have been stripped of the intellectual integrity they had 60 years ago and fail to prepare students for university.”341

  This criticism of school exams highlights the fact that the general lack of preparation for undergraduate study is the result of a systemic failure within the wider education system. Political pressure to meet targets distorts the aims and objectives of universities, schools and exam boards alike. When targets are placed ahead of quality, the result is that increasing numbers of young people leave schools without having learnt how to learn.

  In 2012, Cambridge Assessment, an arm of the university’s qualifications group, conducted research over an 18–month period with 633 academics. They asked them about the support they provided to new undergraduates, finding that:

  “... more than half of lecturers think that undergraduates are unprepared for degree–level study. Three fifths (60%) said that their universities are providing extra ‘support’ classes, usually focusing on writing and independent learning. Nearly three quarters (72%) said that they have changed their teaching styles for students who are not ready for university study.”342

  In 2012, the Economic and Social Research Council contacted 1,600 students studying mathematics, science, engineering and medicine. Their report highlighted that in many schools maths teaching was almost exclusively focused on passing qualifications, with minimal time spent preparing students for studying maths at university. The result was that: “... many students suffered a ‘culture shock’ at university after failing to get the level of assistance they were used to at school or college. Professor Geoffrey Wake, who co–authored the study, said the demands placed on students taking degree courses ‘came as a bit of a shock for many students’.”343